


Queens of The Scorch

by Littlestsociopath



Series: Queens of The Glade [2]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 53,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29027184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlestsociopath/pseuds/Littlestsociopath
Series: Queens of The Glade [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129442
Kudos: 1





	1. Director Janson

The helicopter lands and the sound of chaos brings Cleo back from the brink of sleep. The panic makes her reach for her bow, which she can’t find, she looks to Minho who is also looking around in confusion, and she notices he doesn’t have it either. “Come on,” the men start to file them out, but Cleo is gently shaking Marie awake when the yelling starts.

“Ma,” Cleo says shaking her a little more vigorously now. “We need to go.”

“What?” Marie asks. But as soon as she remembers where she is, she starts to scramble to her feet.

“Come on,” Cleo takes Marie’s hand and with the help of Minho they exit the helicopter. Minho helps lift Marie down and Cleo watches to make sure everyone out. Newt grabs her wrist and Cleo looks at him.

“Move,” Newt says.

“Thomas,” Cleo says, Thomas is still scrambling around the helicopter.

“He is coming, come on,” Newt says. Cleo looks back at Thomas, who has found whatever it was he was looking for and is rushing through the sand to catch up, Marie keeps looking back to see where Cleo and Newt are. That’s when the figures start coming over the edge of the dunes.

“We have company,” one of the men says. Cleo turns to look at the figures.

“What are those?” she asks. No one answers as they start firing their guns at them and telling the kids to run. “What are they?” Cleo asks, once again reaching for a bow she doesn’t have. She wants to protect her friends, but she doesn’t even understand what the threats are anymore. They are close to a large building now, the men opening up the doors when Cleo sees it, coming over the sand towards them. Things that look like they might have once been people.

“The cranks keep coming,” one of the men says.

“Cranks?” Thomas asks. Marie squeezes tight to Cleo’s hand but Cleo’s eyes are fixed on one of the cranks, except that isn’t what she is seeing. She sees Gally, trying to make his way through the storm. In the yelling and the screeches being made, she can hear him calling out her name.

“Gally?” she asks, moving forward. Marie being the only person to hear what she said, pulls her back full force as the doors open and they stumble in. Cleo blinking herself back into reality sees the crank as the doors close, as a bullet explodes its skull.

“Cleo?” Marie asks, looking very concerned.

“I’m fine,” Cleo tells her. “I’m fine.”

“I know that you aren’t” Ma says. “Talk to me.”

“Not right now, okay.”

“Cleo-,” they are cut off by the men guiding them through the loading bay. Marie looks around to check everyone is with them, close, safe. She looks back to Cleo and Cleo is tapping her inner palm with her thumb, something Marie had noticed she does when she wakes up from a bad dream, it is like her way of knowing if she is still asleep. Cleo looks down at her blood-soaked hands and then back up to catch Ma’s eye again. She smiles, and that smile feels like the biggest lie Cleo has ever told Ma, and they both know it.

The guards leave them in a large empty room, with a few metal stools and a table. Cleo being herself sits on the floor, back to the hard concrete wall. Thomas is checking on Marie, seeing if she is okay. Minho sits down next to Cleo. “You really love her, don’t you?” Minho asks, his voice quiet, eyes fixed on Thomas and Ma. Cleo doesn’t even turn to him.

“More than I can ever prove,” Cleo says.

“And what about him?” he asks. Cleo doesn’t know what Minho means by that question. Is he asking if she loves Newt? Is he asking if she loves Thomas? “Do you think he loves her that much?”

“I can’t pretend that I have any better idea of what is going on in Thomas’s head and heart than I do of anyone else,” Cleo says.

“But,” Minho says.

“And I think no one loves Marie like I do,” Cleo says.

“But,” Minho repeats.

“But I think he loves her in all the ways he knows how,” Cleo says.

“And what about her?” Minho asks.

“I know nothing of how Marie feels,” Cleo says. “I know that, I am not naive enough to believe that Marie wouldn’t have feelings, I just seem to be acutely aware that for whatever reasons, she doesn’t share them with me.”

“You two share everything,” Minho says, looking towards Newt. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?” Cleo asks, eyes still on Marie.

“Never mind,” Minho says.

“You know I know, right?” Cleo asks.

“Know what?” Minho asks.

“That Thomas isn’t the only person who looks at Marie that way,” Cleo says, turning to Minho now. “I see how you look at her, and I understand it. I know that I, myself, could fall in love with her, if I let myself. But I love her too much for that. I love her too much for things to get messy or complicated.”

“What are you trying to say?” Minho asks.

“I adore you Minho, you are not perfect but you are good,” Cleo says. “You are brave and you are strong and you make poor choices sometimes but I need you to promise me you wont make any more choices when it comes to her.”

“I wouldn’t-,”

“I know you think you wouldn’t do anything that could hurt her, but I often think that too, and I’ve proven myself wrong, time and time again, I think I do things unintentionally, things I don’t even know about that still hurt her somehow. And she deserves to be loved more than any of us, and I just want you to promise me, that you care about her in a way that means you want her happy, no matter the cost,” Cleo says.

“Is that what Thomas wants for her?” He asks.

“I think so, I think he would be willing to walk away if it meant she was happy,” Cleo makes him look at her, “I would give anything in this world to see her happy, and that is what it means for me to love her. And that is what I mean when I say no one loves her like I do.”

“What if you don’t even know you're hurting her, what if your existence is what hurts her?” he asks.

“Then I would cease to exist.”

Minho wants to call her out, that she cannot simply be that selfless, but then he thinks of the way she looked when she shot Gally, and he isn’t so sure. He goes to ask her something but Marie walks over and sits next to them, resting her head on Cleo’s shoulder and he keeps his silence.

“It’s been hours,” Frypan says starting to pace. Thomas is staring at the ceiling.

“You know you stare at it any longer and it might come alive,” Newt says sitting next to him.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Thomas says.

“You are trying not to look at her, aren’t you?” Newt asks. Thomas turns to him. “Don’t worry mate, I won’t say anything. And they can’t hear us.”

“How do you know that?” Thomas asks. Newt mumbles a fake insult in Cleo’s direction and she doesn’t move. “Fair enough.”

“Can I ask you something?” Newt asks after a moments more silence.

“Might as well,” Thomas says. “We might be here a while.”

“Do you love her?” Newt says. “Marie, because you look at her like you do.”

“I loved her before, back at WCKD,” Thomas says.

“Did she love you?” Newt asks. Thomas sighs.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “We got so caught up in everything I didn’t ever get a chance to tell her how I felt, and I never knew how she felt.”

“I see the way she looks at you,” Newt says. “It might not be love, but it is something.”

“It’s not how she looks at you though,” Thomas says. Newt’s heart nearly stops, he thought maybe he was over thinking it, maybe he was getting the wrong idea, how could he have overlooked something for so long? But hearing the words from Thomas’s mouth all but confirmed his thoughts. What he realized back at WCKD. What he should have realized a long time ago. “And I mean, I noticed how you looked at her, until now.”

“What do you mean?” Newt asks.

“I watched you all on those screens for so long, so long,” he takes a deep breath. “How could I notice. I watched her look at you, every day and I wonder if she had ever looked at me like that, I couldn’t remember or like you I just hadn’t noticed. I saw the way you looked at her, you knew how special she was, but you had eyes for someone else,” Newt looks at Cleo for a moment before turning back to Thomas, “and it made sense. I mean, Cleo is herself, and she loved you then-,”

“She what?” Newt asks.

“In the labs, before The Maze, Cleo was smitten with you,” Thomas says. “She never worked for WCKD Newt, she was just there by happenstance, by fate. All she had to do was live her life around the facility, but she put herself into the studies there, without even knowing, day in, day out, because she just wanted to see you. It was kind of cute, and she and Marie got along so well, she spent more time with you than anyone.”

“You remember everything now,” Newt says.

“Not everything, I remember a lot, but there are still spots in my memory, things I don’t understand or that don’t connect,” Thomas says. “I just mostly remember the cameras, and the labs and the relationships.”

“You watched us all that time,” Newt says. He isn’t attacking Thomas, he understands things in a way that a lot of people don’t, he is just trying to understand.

“I watched you all, and I watched you fall for Cleo, which was a plot twist,” Thomas says.

“Why?” Newt asks.

“I wouldn’t have said the feelings were mutual in the labs, she adored you and you liked her, sure,” Thomas says. “But I kind of thought you liked Marie. And I didn’t really remember that until I saw the way you changed looking at her, like a bubble burst, like you remembered. You never used to look at her like that, you looked at her with love but not like that. Things are different now. I could have been wrong then, jealous, maybe, I could be wrong now. But what do I know, you can’t even look at Cleo right now without that look.”

“What look?”

“Confusion,” Thomas says.

“I know what she had to do wasn’t fair,” Newt says.

“She saved my life,” Thomas says.

“But it’s him that’s bothering me, why did he listen to her so much?”

“He was always like that,” Thomas says.

“Maybe when you got to The Glade, but they always fought on everything, anything, it is like they couldn’t agree to save their lives, but she wasn’t scared of standing in front of him when he had a gun,” Newt looks to the ceiling, “I can’t tell if that was stupidity or bravery or something else, I am missing.”

“He was stung, maybe like me, like Alby he just remembered,” Thomas says. “Gally loved Cleo, back then. It never made sense to me that he disliked her so much in The Maze.”

The door opens and some of the men from before walk in with another man. “Hello,” he says. “I’m Director Janson. Welcome.”

Janson is trying to talk but Cleo is addressing one of the guards. He looks at her, and he comes intrigued. “Is there a problem?” he asks.

“One of them has my bow, I would like it returned to me,” Cleo says without hesitation.

“Your bow?” he asks. “Why would they have that?”

“I don’t know, but we had it when they picked us up and now I don’t,” Cleo says.

“Your bow?” Janson reiterates. Cleo can’t tell if he is playing dumb or if he really is that dumb. He gestures to question if she means a hair bow, “like a ribbon?”

“No,” Cleo says irritated. “A bow and arrow.”

“You don’t need that here,” the man repeats.

“You don’t need a weapon now,” Janson says. “You are safe here.”

“It is mine and I would like it back,” Cleo says. Janson sighs. “I made it.”

“I will see what we can sort out,” he says before turning back the rest of the group and continuing to explain about himself and the facility. He tells them all they have been rescued from WCKD, that his place is only temporary and as soon as he can he will have them moved somewhere safe, somewhere WCKD will never get to them again. He tells them he will provide them with food and water and safety, a bed and shelter. He tells them because they are immune, they are very valuable.

“Immune?” Marie asks.

“That is why WCKD wanted you,” Janson explains.

“You remember that?” Newt asks Thomas. Thomas shakes his head.

“Not really, I remember they were looking for a cure, I remember some things but I didn’t know we were supposed to be immune,” Thomas says. Cleo can’t help but think _not all of us are_.

Janson, either not hearing or plain ignoring the chatter amongst themselves continues to talk and explain. “And now, to deal with the smell,” he jokes and gestures to a room, “shower everyone?”


	2. Sing To Me Marie

The boys move into the showers with speed while Cleo and Marie hover behind, wearier than the boys. Marie fixated on Cleo and her growing concern for what she heard her say, and Cleo incredibly suspicious of everything going on in its entirety. A woman joins them carrying towels and clean clothes. She smiles at the girls and Ma smiles back, Cleo does not, she looks back with the same reproach she has been since they met Janson.

“Cleo, right?” Janson asks. “This is Evie.” The woman smiles.

“Once you’ve got clean, we have new clean clothes,” says one of the women handing her a towel.

“No,” Cleo says.

“Pardon?” she asks, concerned.

“I will be keeping my clothes,” Cleo says.

“I’m sorry but-,” she starts but Cleo cuts her off.

“I am keeping them, you can pry them off my dead body,” Cleo says. Janson places a hand on the woman’s shoulder.

“She can keep her clothes,” Janson says.

“But can we at least-,” Evie starts.

“I’ll wash them myself,” Cleo says taking the towel and Marie’s hand before walking away.

“You are worrying me a little Cleo,” Marie says. Cleo is staring at the shower door, she is reluctant to lock it, she is reluctant to do anything that means she can’t keep her eyes on Marie at all times.

“I don’t mean to,” Cleo says.

“Can we talk about-,”

“Later,” Cleo says, Marie wants to insist but the sound of Cleo’s voice deters her, the sadness, the pleading. Marie would never think Cleo as weak in any regard but in this moment, she sounded it. Cleo leans on the shower door, and looks up at the towel hung over the door. She thinks about the clean clothes laid outside waiting for her. She doesn’t like not being able to check on Marie, not after everything they have been through, she doesn’t want to let Marie out of her sight, but she listens to her lock the shower door and she does so in turn. She sighs, hand hovering on the door and looks at her bloodied clothes. “Ma?” she asks through the door.

“Yeah?” Ma responds.

“Can I ask you to do me a favour?”

“Anything.”

“Sing to me Marie,” Cleo says. “So, I know you are there.”

“Of course,” Marie says. “Any request?”

“I just,” Cleo leans her head on the wall, “I need to hear your voice, okay?”

“Okay.”

Once all the blood washes down the drain, Cleo looks back at her bloodied clothes, hearing the water cut out for Marie as she stops singing, Cleo’s attention draws back to the gun she has rested on her clothes. The gun she shot Gally with. The shaped metal that altered her life in a way that she can’t explain.

“You done Ma” Cleo calls out.

“Sure, what do you need,” Ma responds.

“Can you hold something for me?” Cleo asks, opening the door to let her in. Ma looks at Cleo, hair damp, wrapped in a towel.

“What do you need me to hold?” she asks as Cleo locks the door. Cleo notices Ma has changed into her new clothes. She looks so soft, in the oversized grey jumper, a little too long on her, and the clean black trousers. She looks so different, yet so familiar.

“Did they take yours?” Cleo asks, “your clothes?”

“Yeah,” Ma responds, shrugging it off. “But I was cold so they gave me a jumper at least.”

“The fuckers,” Cleo mutters.

“Don’t make a fuss, please, not for me,” Ma says.

“I will always make a fuss for you,” Cleo says. Ma doesn’t want conflict and as much as she didn’t want to see her clothes go, as much as she could never wear them again knowing they are soaked in Chuck’s blood, she still wishes she had a chance to hold them again. They were a part of her life for so long. They are all she had from that life she just said a quick, turbulent, bloody, goodbye to, and she wishes she had a better chance to say goodbye, a less violent chance.

“What do you need me to hold?” Ma asks.

“Just until I get clean and put my real clothes back on, because,” Cleo looks at the soft white long sleeve and shorts, “no pockets and not very subtle,” she smiles at Marie, “but your clothes much better for this.” Marie tugs on her long sleeves, looking back perplexed.

“I don’t,” Marie says. Cleo reaches into her clothes on the floor and pulls out the gun. “How the,” Ma stops mid-sentence. “You snuck the gun in here?”

“Well, I wasn’t leaving it,” Cleo says, eyes fixed on the gun.

“Cleo if they find that,” Ma starts.

“They took my bow, don’t you think I know what they would do?” Cleo asks. “But this gun is as much a part of me now as anything, as my clothes, as the history of a life I can remember. Those things are all that I am.”

“No, you are much more than that,” Ma says.

“It doesn’t matter, because I am not handing it over and I am letting it go, and I cannot hide it in this,” Cleo says.

“Cleo,” Ma tries.

“I killed with this gun, it is now a part of me, they can’t take it, they couldn’t even pry it from my corpse, you can trust me on that,” Cleo says. All the pieces are adding up to Marie, she may not have all her history in place, her knowledge of the medical information she used to have, but she recognises damage when she sees it. She tries to speak, but Evie cuts them off.

“Is everything okay in there?” she asks.

“Actually, could you please get Cleo a jumper, she’s really cold,” Ma says. Cleo’s eyes light up.

“Of course,” Evie says and they listen to her walk away.

“Now it doesn’t have to leave you, even in these clothes,” Ma says. “But please, Cleo, we need to talk about this.”

“We will,” Cleo says, “when they aren’t listening.”

Sat in the medical bay next to Thomas Cleo watches Marie, she is sat on the bed opposite, the walkway down the bay between them, but she can see her, and that’s what matters. A nurse is taking Thomas’s blood and leaves to get something and Thomas looks to Cleo. “You love him, don’t you, I guess that was obvious, but I didn’t want to ask,” Thomas says.

“Sorry what?” Cleo asks, leaning to slide the plastic divider between her and Winston in the next bed. He isn’t listening but she feels very exposed all of a sudden. Ma tilts her head from across the room at her, and she nods to let her know she is okay.

“Newt,” Thomas says. Cleo laughs nervously.

“No,” Cleo says instinctively.

“I think that might be the first time I have seen you lie,” Thomas says.

“I,” Cleo stops. “I try not to lie.”

“Then why lie about that?” he asks. “You are so open with everything else.”

“It’s complicated,” Cleo says.

“You know how I feel, you know how everyone feels,” Thomas says. “Yet you want to hide your feelings from everyone else?”

“Not everyone,” Cleo says. “Just one person.”

“Why?” Thomas asks.

“Newt,” Cleo sighs. “It’s complicated.”

“I watched you both for a long time,” Thomas says. “Before you went into The Maze and after, and I don’t think it is that complicated.”

“I think you don’t know how complicated it is,” Cleo says.

“You weren’t scared to love him then, why now?” he asks. Cleo looks at him. “Yeah, you loved him back then too.”

“None of that matters,” Cleo says. “Whatever I did or didn’t do, whatever I felt or didn’t, whoever I was before The Maze, I am never going to be that person again. I am not that kid anymore. I am something entirely new. So, it doesn’t matter, none of it does. My life started in The Maze, and I thought it would end there. But here I am. And I have bigger priorities than unrequited love.”

“I guess your mother would’ve been glad to hear that.”

“Yeah?” Cleo scoffs. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“She hated how you were with all of them, it didn’t really make sense to me at the time, but it figures now I know she is your mother, I remember her calling you weak for you attachments, and I never thought it was fair of her to say that,” Thomas says. “She always treated Teresa more like a daughter than you, that’s why I didn’t know. But I think it was her harshness towards you, for caring, that gave you a clue as to what was to come, because one day you turned up and you looked so worried, so protective and nothing had changed. But as soon as they started to go for The Maze, you were something else. It was like you had figured it out.”

“Like Marie, figuring out the reality of the situation?” Cleo asks.

“Marie was gone for a while, a long while actually before I saw her come up in the box, I don’t know where she was all that time in between, but I don’t think it was a coffee date,” Thomas says. “I knew I should have done something earlier, they were subjects but they were also my friends, Gally after you were gone…”

“Gally?” Cleo asks, not looking up from her hands, they are clean now, but it feels like they are still stained with his blood. She can see her clothes from the corner of her eye, she can feel the weight of the gun sticking into her stomach. She can feel his hand on her waist, it is like he is there, but he is gone.

“Gally was, different before, he wasn’t angry like he is… was,” Thomas says. “Sorry, I’ll stop.”

“How long was Marie gone before you saw what they did to her?” Cleo asks.

“It felt like forever, I don’t know exactly how long but after asking and asking about her, one day I walked into the surveillance room and there she was on screen. I felt like I was drowning. I spent every moment I could, volunteering for surveillance, I was like you with Newt, every day, volunteering. You know he doesn’t think you feel that way about him now.”

“Because he doesn’t need to know,” Cleo says. “What good does him knowing that I have feelings that don’t line up. I don’t need to make anything any more complicated, you get that Thomas? So we stop talking about it, we stop acknowledging it. What I feel doesn’t matter. There is only one thing that matters, that really matters.”

“Marie,” he says. “Yeah, I know what that is like, sitting back and watching someone you love just wanting the best for them, even if they go and fall in love with someone else.”

“No one is falling in love with anyone,” Cleo says.

“No, they already have,” Thomas says. Cleo looks at Marie, and back at Thomas.

“Marie hasn’t fallen in love with anyone Thomas, she would have told me,” Cleo says. Thomas looks at her.

“Unless she didn’t,” Thomas says. Cleo is close to picking a fight on this when she sees Dr Crawford try to pull the screen around Marie’s bed and Cleo jumps up fast and walks over, taking a seat next to Ma.

“I am just checking her over,” Crawford assures Cleo. Cleo takes Marie’s hand and nods.

“Sure, but I am staying with her,” Cleo says.

“You should really have your bloods taken-,”

“You have another thing coming if you think anyone is taking any blood from me,” Cleo says. Marie glances to the metal table where her blood samples are sitting. She knows Cleo’s defiance runs deep, she knows Cleo is willing to fight at any and every opportunity, especially when she is in a situation she doesn’t recognise or trust in the slightest, and she definitely doesn’t trust anyone here. Marie doesn’t blame her, but she also is worried about how her resistance to have any hope will impact the others.

“She doesn’t like needles,” Ma explains. Cleo looks at her, and squeezes her hand.

“I am not having any needles anywhere near me, and I am not leaving her side, is that going to be a problem Dr Crawford?” Cleo asks. The doctor sighs.

“No, course not dear,” she says. “I see you two are very close.”

“She’s my favourite person,” Cleo says.

“That’s a brave statement,” Crawford says taking Marie’s blood pressure.

“Not really,” Cleo says. “The boys know their place.” Ma smiles a little, a genuine smile.

“What about the other girl?” Crawford asks.

“Who?” Cleo asks, half serious, half vicious. “Oh Teresa. She knows too.”

“Am I missing something?” the doctor asks. Cleo looks at her, the doctor looks nice enough, she doesn’t look malicious or untrustworthy in any specific way, but Cleo still doesn’t like her as she checks Marie, she still wants to threaten her every time Marie winces or looks uncomfortable. She just wants to tear anyone apart who could hurt her.

“Director Janson wants to speak to you,” a man tells Thomas, loudly, and it grabs both Marie and Cleo’s attention even through the divider.

“What’s that about?” Ma asks.

“Don’t worry about it, you will see your friends again soon, there are just a few little things that need to be sorted out,” the doctor says leaving for a moment.

“When they tell me not to worry, it makes me think there is reason to,” Cleo says.

“I know what you mean.”

“Marie,” Cleo says clambering onto the bed next to her. Ma moves to let her on and places her head on Cleo’s chest, Cleo starts to play with a few strands of her hair, gently. “We don’t keep secrets from each other, do we?” Ma feels her breath hitch in her throat.

“Not unless we are protecting each other,” she says.

“That’s the only reason, right?” Cleo asks.

“The only reason, I would ever keep anything from you ‘Leo, is to protect you,” she says.

“Same,” she kisses the top of her head gently. “Can you sing to me Marie, something happy.”

“Always.” 


	3. I Need You To Talk To Me

“Where are they going?” Marie asks as the boys are guided down a different hallway.

“They are just being shown to their room,” Evie explains. She guides them down another hall.

“And why aren’t we going with them?” Cleo asks.

“You have a room for you,” Evie says.

“Just for us?” Ma asks, perplexed.

“Yes, just for you,” Evie says opening a door. She lets them into a small room with a sink and a bunk bed. She smiles at them both. “I’ll let you get settled in, but when you are ready, take the left corridor and the big doors, you should see your friends in there.”

“Thank you,” Marie says.

Cleo listens to the door click shut as Evie leaves and Marie slowly walks around the room, getting to know her surroundings. “Top bunk?” she asks Cleo after a while.

“You know me,” Cleo says.

“What kind of friend would I be otherwise?” Ma asks. Cleo feels stuck in place, in this moment. Something about Marie calling her a friend feels… strange, like it doesn’t exactly cut it. What they have, it goes beyond friendship, it goes beyond love, it is something words will never find a way to describe. Cleo loves nothing more in the world knowing that Marie is her friend, but in this moment, in the quiet of this small concrete room, in a strange place, far away from the only home she ever remembered. She wants to invent a whole new language, just to tell Ma how glad she is to be here with her. “Cleo?” Ma asks bringing Cleo back into the room.

“I should,” Cleo looks at her clothes in her hands. “I should wash these,” she moves to the sink and watches the water start to fill the sink.

“Can I do anything?” Ma asks. Cleo feels a lump in her throat, like she could just break down.

“Ma,” she says, voice quivering. “You do everything already.” She puts her shirt in the water and the blood starts to separate from the fabric, the water turning a pink and then a red, and Cleo looks at her hands in the water, in the blood. And she is suddenly back at WCKD, her hands wet with blood, her eyes fixed on Gally as he tries to speak. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice a whisper that slowly starts to become a scream. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” She doesn’t even realise she is crying until Ma pulls her back from the sink and wraps her hands in a blanket to hide the colour of blood.

“Cleo, Cleo, look at me,” Ma says. Marie has never seen Cleo likes this, she has seen Cleo scared after a nightmare, she has seen Cleo worried about her friends when they are running The Maze. But Cleo always had this way of whether she was sad or scared, of shutting it down, closing it off, Cleo was always good at turning fear into anger, because she can use anger, Cleo knows how to control and channel anger. Cleo has always been good at twisting her feelings into something she can use. The first time Marie had ever really seen her look completely lost and without direction was pointing that gun at Gally, and she has never seen her like this, in a state like this. Cleo is barely recognisable as she shakes, her eyes wide but unseeing, like she is somewhere else. “Cleo,” she says again. Cleo looks at her and then at the sink where the water is flowing over, pooling on the floor, the blood-stained water dripping down the sink.

“I need to turn the tap off,” Cleo says. Marie does it for her, and Cleo sits on Marie’s bunk, shaking. Marie leaves the water and the clothes in the sink and sits next to her. She puts an arm around her and she feels cold.

“Cleo, I need you to talk to me, okay?” Ma asks. “Please.”

“Okay,” Cleo says, her own tears starting to dampen the fabric of the bed and her eyes red and puffy now.

“I am so sorry,” Ma says. “For what you had to do.”

“I know,” Cleo says.

“And you can say you would do it again, and it was what you had to do, and you can say that over and over again, and it might be true,” Ma says. “But you can’t hide the fact it is hurting you, you can’t hide that not from me, and in this state not from anyone.”

“I feel empty, but like I’m drowning in it Ma, I’m downing in the emptiness, I don’t know what to do,” Cleo says, voice cracking as she cries.

“I am so sorry,” Ma says. She just holds her, Ma can do a lot of things for Cleo, but she was never able to protect her in the ways Cleo can protected Ma. Cleo can fight and defend, and Marie can care but she couldn’t ever fight a griever or walk The Maze to find her if she was lost, she would die for Cleo, but she can’t protect Cleo from the choices she had to make, from the actions she took. She can’t protect Cleo from the hard stuff. It is why keeping her feelings to herself is so important because that is the only way she truly can wholly protect Cleo. “I never would have… If you did- I know you did it for me, but I would never… I couldn’t… I didn’t want that for you. I can’t imagine what it’s like, to kill someone-,”

“It wasn’t just someone though, was it?” Cleo asks.

“It was Gally,” Ma says. “And with everything going on, that must have been even harder. You may not have had feelings for him like he did for you-,”

“But I did,” Cleo says. Ma’s expression changes, from apology to heartbreak in an instant. “I didn’t realise what I was feeling until I held the gun out in front of me, I didn’t realise what it mean that he had this way to being in my head until I was trying to save him. I didn’t want to pull the trigger not because I am scared to be a killer Ma, I would kill and kill and kill again if it kept you safe. I would do that without remorse, without regret. I am not scared of being a monster. But-,”

“You were in love with him… weren’t you?” Ma asks.

“I think I was, in a way,” Cleo says. “And he loved me, and I didn’t want to believe he did, because the last time I let myself think someone loved me, they hurt me, and I couldn’t let myself go through that again. And my feelings for Newt don’t go away, and how could I love Gally if I love Newt, you can’t two people at once,” Ma looks away, “but I guess you can. Because my feelings for Newt never changes, they never budged no matter what he did or what I felt, I loved him, with all of me. And as much as I didn’t want to feel anything, anything again, Gally got in, he got under my skin and then he made me choose. Between him and you, he didn’t mean to, he didn’t think he was, but he knew, he knew I would always choose you. And he died, paying that price. And I love you Marie, and I don’t want you to blame yourself, not even for a second, because no matter how this feels, even knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t change it.”

“Cleo,” Ma says.

“I would make the same choice over and over again, no matter how much it hurts,” Cleo looks her directly in the eyes now, “I will always protect you Marie, no matter the cost.”

“I don’t want that,” Marie says, “I don’t ever want to be the reason you are in pain Cleo.”

“It doesn’t work like that, loving someone doesn’t work like that,” Cleo says. “Because it doesn’t matter what I have to do, what I have to go through to protect you, no matter how bad it hurts, because losing you would hurt more.”

“Cleo,” Ma says. She gets it now, that she may not look at her the way she looks at Newt, and she may never love her like she would want to be loved, but Cleo loves Marie more than anything, and that is painfully clear. “You said Gally, after the helicopter.”

“I thought I saw him, I know I didn’t, I know I can’t have, but for a moment, I thought it was him.”

“Cleo you should tell someone, the doctors?”

“I can’t, I don’t trust anyone, no but you,” Cleo says. “Promise me you won’t say anything.”

“Cleo-,”

“Promise me,” Cleo says, grabbing her hand. Marie just wants to protect her, to do all the things Cleo has always done for her, she just wants to make her feel better, and safe, and loved. She wants to take her pain away and she knows that she can’t. She is drowning in it, and Marie is drowning right beside her.

“I promise,” Ma says.

“I just, I need you to remind me of what is real, okay?”

“Okay.”


	4. Cleopatra Cooper

They wait until the cleaned clothes have dried, Marie having washed the rest of the blood out so Cleo didn’t have to. She understands why she wanted to keep the clothes now, they were the only thing she had that was connecting her to Gally, except of course the gun she used to kill him.

Dressed back in her soft grey shirt and green all in one, Cleo looks at the mirror over the sink while Marie leans on the radiator. “You feel any better?” Marie asks.

“Do you want an honest answer?” Cleo asks, looking at herself but not recognising her reflection.

“Yes,” Ma says.

“I feel like we should go see the boys, maybe then,” Cleo says.

“Okay,” Marie says offering out her hand, “hand in hand?”

“Hand in unforgivable hand.”

Ma and Cleo follow Evie’s directions find themselves in a large cafeteria and Minho is by their side in moments. “We weren't the only Maze,” he says.

“What?” Marie asks. Cleo looks around at all the kids. So many of them. She steps out of herself and she starts to look like herself again, pushing the horror aside, she smiles at Minho and takes a seat.

Cleo is sat at the table, pushing the food around her plate unenthusiastically. Most of the others are talking to strangers but Cleo is too in her own head. Marie keeps looking at her, checking on her, Thomas is talking. She notices them gesture to a boy sat alone at the far side of the cafeteria, she doesn’t catch his name. There is some commotion, talking and excitement. Cleo notices Teresa, walking past the windows of the cafeteria, no one else does, and she doesn’t say a word. Cleo starts watching the kids as they move around, watching over Marie, any time someone looks in her direction she gets worried, protective, she is on high alert and all she can do to keep herself looking like anything she recognises is do the one thing she is good at, look after Marie.

Someone taps Cleo on the shoulder and she looks up to see a face she doesn’t recognise. “Hi,” he says leaning down to her. She looks back at him, with disinterest.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

“You just got here, didn’t you?” he asks. The boy has also garnered Marie and Newt’s attention at this point.

“Observant,” she says. “Give the boy a prize.” Minho tries to stifle his laugh.

“You’re feisty, I like that,” he says.

“I am glad someone likes something about this conversation,” Cleo says. Marie becomes concerned, she knows that tone from Cleo, she knows that look.

“I am sure I can show you something you do like, but it probably won’t involve much talking,” he says. Newt is out of his seat, fast.

“I think you need to back the fuck up,” Newt starts, but Cleo grabs his arm, forcing him back down.

“Boyfriend?” the boy asks.

“Cleo,” Ma says worried.

“No,” Cleo says. “He isn’t my boyfriend,” she looks to Newt for a moment, “or my body guard.”

“Well,” he starts.

“But I agree with his sentiment, you need to back up,” Cleo says. “I am not whatever you think I am.”

“Well, if you change your mind, come find me,” he says, leaning in close to whisper in her ear. “I don’t ever want to be your boyfriend.” He squeezes Cleo’s shoulder as he turns to leave and Minho looks like he is about to make a move to deck the guy. But Cleo just sighs.

“Not a chance,” she says, trying to turn back to her food, trying for Ma’s benefit more than anything else, not to lose her shit. But when he comes back, and starts speaking she grabs his arm from over her own shoulder and yanks him forward smashing him into the table, hard. “You know,” Cleo says looking down at the now very dazed boy. “I just washed dried blood off my hands, blood of a friend, blood I drew, so I would be careful the lines you cross. Because if that’s what I am willing to do to a friend, you don’t know what I would do to you.”

One of the guards grabs her and both Newt and Minho are quick to react. “We don’t want any more trouble kids,” the guard says. “Janson just wants a word with Cleo.”

“You aren’t taking her anywhere,” Thomas says, hand on Marie’s shoulder, as she watches.

“Kid, you don’t really get a say,” the guard says. He tugs Cleo’s arm and she look to Marie.

“I’ll be back in just a moment,” she tells Marie before looking at Minho. “Keep her safe.”

“Cleo you don’t have to,” Newt says.

“I’m fine, I’ll be fine” Cleo says following the guard.

“You have been here less than a day and you’ve already demanded to be given a weapon-,” Janson says, sitting at a desk at staring at Cleo, who is leaning against the wall, arms crossed in defiance.

“I have demanded my own property be returned to me” Cleo points out.

“It is still a weapon,” Janson reminds her, getting out his seat.

“I made it, it is mine,” she says.

“And you’ve assaulted a fellow survivor,” Janson says. “You are traumatised, I understand, I saw the blood, I was told of the scene that my men arrived to, whatever you had to do, it must have been very hard. So, I understand the shock.”

“He was being an asshole, I was teaching him manners,” Cleo says, trying not to think about the blood, about WCKD, about Gally.

“Do you think I don’t know who you are, Ms Cooper,” Janson says. Cleo’s eyes dart up.

“What did you call me?” she asks.

“Cleopatra Cooper is your name, isn’t it?” he asks. Cleo isn’t sure. Her surname wasn’t listed in her file, she just assumed it was Paige like her mother. But Janson seemed to think differently. And it worries her. “We know exactly who you are Cleopatra.”

“Do you?” she asks.

“You are Ava Paige’s daughter, you were quite a prevalent face in the earlier days of W.C.K.D, you are quite distinct. Everyone here knows who you are, Ms Cooper.”

“Except me,” Cleo points out. “You are all more strangers to me than my bow, so I would like it back.” Janson sighs.

“I am going to let that incident in the cafeteria slip, okay? You are startled and I don’t blame you, you have been through a lot,” he says. “But you have to take some responsibility now Cleopatra.”

“Stop calling me that,” she says, moving in a way that for the first time Janson sees the small metal chain around her neck.

“You like pretty things,” Janson says, not realising the significance of her necklace and just seeing it as that, a necklace, “and in your situation, you didn’t have anything, nothing from your life, nothing from your Maze, nothing that’s yours, let’s see if we can come to an agreement for something… less dangerous…”

“Are you trying to bribe me, Director Janson?” Cleo asks. “Because that is odd behaviour.”

“No, Cleo, I am simply trying to make you feel more comfortable, more at home,” he says.

“Well, you could give me my bow back,” she says. “That would make me feel more comfortable.”

“I am seeing what I can do,” he says, like before. “But is there anything else I can do, to calm your nerves, because that will help us all.”

“Just take me back to Marie, that is all I want,” Cleo says. Janson nods.

“Then you can go back to Marie.”

Ma practically jumps out of her seat to greet her and she moves aside so she sits next to her now, instead of opposite. Newt looks at her, concerned, she notices how that’s all he has looked at her like since WCKD. It is like he has no other setting right now. “What was that about?” Thomas asks.

“What did he want to talk to you about?” Cleo responds.

“He wanted to know who’s side I was on,” Thomas says.

“He wanted to tell me that he knew exactly who I was, and I needed to get my shit together,” Cleo says.

“You kind of are acting out of sorts,” Frypan says. Cleo looks at him, expression blank.

“I just killed someone, I think I am allowed a grace period,” she says.

“Just leave her be,” Ma mouths. Newt looks at her, and he can feel it, the question bugging him, building inside, like he can’t wait much longer. He doesn’t want to push Cleo, he doesn’t want to upset her, he never wanted to upset her. But the question is eating away at him.

He is only pulled out of his mind to hear names being called, kids being taken by Janson to the promised safety. Cleo looks to see Grayson, the boy she nearly knocked unconscious earlier be called, and she rolls her eyes. “Won’t be seeing him again at least,” she mumbles.

After a while the guards tell them it is time to head back and they all slowly start to filter out. But Newt grabs Cleo’s arm at the corridor change. Ma stops a few steps ahead of them, looking back. “Can you talk to me?” he asks Cleo. Marie hearing this, she nods at her and walks further forward, heading to the room.

“Newt,” Cleo starts.

“It kind of feels like you’re talking to everyone except me,” Newt says. It’s true. She is. But she isn’t actively avoiding him. Not this time. She just is scared.

“Sure, what do you need?” Cleo asks.

“I don’t need anything,” he says, moving his hand from her arm to her hand. She looks at his hand as it holds hers and she feels a tightness in her chest. Like a guilt. “I just, I want to check on you. I am worried about you. What you went through, what you had to do.”

“I’m okay,” Cleo tries.

“I know that you aren’t, don’t you think I know you?” he steps closer and he moves some of her hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “I know you aren’t okay, but what I don’t know is why you wont talk to me about it?”

“Newt, it isn’t like that,” Cleo says.

“I thought we were on the road to being back to better, I thought we were talking again, being honest with each other, confiding in each other,” he says.

“We are, or at least I want to be,” she can’t look at him. She knows how he will be looking at her right now, the softness, the care, and right now she can’t bare to be looked at the way he looks at her, because it makes her feel happy and loved and calm and she doesn’t feel she deserves any of those things right now. She didn’t ever think she deserved Newt, and now, more than ever, she is sure that is true.

“Then talk to me, what happened with Gally,” he says.

“I did the only thing I could, he wouldn’t listen, he couldn’t listen and he tried he tried to listen but he couldn’t and he was going to hurt Thomas and I couldn’t let that happen, I couldn’t let Marie-,” Cleo cuts herself off to not cry in front of Newt.

“Why did you think he would listen to you anyway?” Newt asks. Cleo looks at him, a little mad. “I don’t mean it like that, I mean, he was stung, wasn’t he? How could you get through to him anyway?”

“He was listening for a moment, I thought, I thought I could get the gun, I was his chance to make it okay, his chance to make it out of it and it would be okay, but I lost him to the rage, and then I didn’t have a choice,” she says. Newt can’t deny it now, even if he wanted to, Gally only listened to Cleo, and Cleo all but confirmed she was the only one who could get through to him.

“Why would he listen to you Cleo?” he asks. She doesn’t respond. “He loved you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Cleo says. “He did.”

“How do you know that?” he asks. Cleo looks back at him.

“He told me, when he tried to keep me locked in a room, to protect me from all that,” she says.

“When you disappeared in the corridor,” Newt says. Cleo nods. She holds her breath, waiting for the question to come, waiting for Newt to ask how she felt about him, waiting for him to ask if she loved him back. But the question never comes. He pulls her into a hug and holds her tight for a moment. When he pulls away, he looks down at her, still against his chest, looking so… tired. “You did what you had to do, and if I could have swapped places with you, I would have.”

“I know Newt.”

“Don’t blame yourself for him loving you,” Newt says. He doesn’t understand, how could he? Cleo barely understands herself. “And you not knowing how to save him.”

“I don’t” she says watching him walk away. She blames herself for loving him and losing him anyway. And more now, she blames herself for ever letting herself love him, when Newt can make her feel… like that. 


	5. Meet Aris

“Has anyone even seen Teresa?” Frypan asks. Newt looks at him from his place on the bed.

“No,” Winston responds.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Newt says.

“I mean,” Thomas says. “I would worry a little.”

“I am more worried that Ma and Cleo are being kept so separate from us,” Minho says.

“I’m sure they are okay,” Winston says.

“What if they aren’t?” Minho asks. Newt shares Minho’s concerns, and Thomas’s but he knows Cleo, he knows Marie, and he wants to believe this place is safe, so what he says next, he means.

“If there’s one thing I know about Cleo, it’s that she can take care of herself,” Newt says, “and she can take care of Ma too if it comes to it.”

“But she shouldn’t have to,” Thomas says. Newt looks at him, knowing all he knows. Thomas wants to protect Marie, Minho wants to protect Marie, and Newt wants to know they are both safe. But there’s something lingering, something quiet and unspoken. It’s starting to fester.

Cleo is looking at the ceiling, laying back on her bunk, Marie on the bed underneath. She doesn’t feel like crying anymore, she doesn’t feel much of anything. “Ma?” Cleo whispers. “You awake?”

“I’m awake,” she responds.

“Does it feel strange to feel so uncomfortable somewhere that is so… comfortable?” Cleo asks.

“You don’t trust security, it makes you anxious because you are so used to not feeling safe,” Ma says, “besides you can’t see the boys from here, and say what you want but one of the benefits of the watch tower was always you could see all of The Glade from up there, you could watch over it at all times. Watch over them all. I liked that about it too.”

“It feels weird to be locked in a room, especially when we can’t get to them,” Cleo says. “I feel almost…”

“Helpless?”

“Yeah, helpless…”

“Welcome to my life,” Marie tries to joke but it comes out sad. Cleo leans over the edge of the bunk, dangling herself down, hair falling in her face and gun jabbing her in the stomach as she does, to look at Marie. Who is holding the pillow sideways, hugging it gently.

“Want me to come down there?” Cleo asks. Ma just nods and Cleo clambers into the bed next to her. She looks at Marie, and Marie smiles back at her, face to face, breaths length away from each other. There is a softness in the moment, a quiet still that they both have needed. Marie goes to speak when they both hear it, the sound of metal clanking to the floor. Cleo bolts up in the bed, leaning forward to see where the sound is coming from. It sounds like underneath.

“Don’t” Ma tries as Cleo leans forward, to once again dangle over the beds edge. She finds herself face to face with the boy from the cafeteria, the one sat by himself.

“Cleo?” he asks. “Aris,” he gestures to himself.

“Hi,” she says, pulling herself back up onto the bed. “It’s Aris.”

“From the other Maze?” Ma asks. Aris pulls himself out from under the bed.

“I need to talk to you,” Aris says.

After a while Aris finishes explaining, how he doesn’t trust this place, how has seen things that don’t make sense, and how he thinks Cleo sees them too, sees that something is wrong.

“Can you get the others to listen?” he asks her. Ma looks at Cleo.

“I just have a feeling,” Cleo says. “I can’t base it all on a feeling.” Aris nods.

“You came through the vents?” Ma asks after a moment.

“Can you get us to the others?” Cleo asks.

“I can do that,” he says. He gestures for them to follow him and Marie goes pale.

“I am, I am not going in there,” Marie says. Cleo looks at her and sees the horror of The Maze, the fear of small spaces, the fear of being trapped, of the vents and Cleo shakes her head.

“She isn’t going in there,” Cleo confirms. “Can you get into the hallway?”

Aris guides them down the corridors quietly until the reach the boys room, the door opening from the outside only when locked, opens quietly. Minho is the first to look up, still awake and still alert as always. “How the hell,” he asks, his voice low.

“Meet Aris,” Cleo says.

“Those doors lock from the outside,” Minho says, his voice waking Newt.

“Yeah, we opened it from the outside,” Cleo says.

“How did you get outside?” Minho asks.

“Once again, meet Aris,” Cleo says, looking at him like he is dumb for not understanding. Ma quietly explains that Aris climbed in the vent system to help them out. Minho isn’t sure if to look concerned or grateful so he just nods.

“What are you doing here?” Thomas asks.

“Nice to see you too,” Cleo says. He gives her a look.

“You know what I mean,” Thomas says. Cleo, taking a seat next to a still half-asleep Newt on his bed, raises an eyebrow at Thomas.

“Do I?”

“Do you have to be difficult?” Thomas asks. Cleo sticks out her tongue at him and pulls her knees up pressing them next to her chest as Newt sits up in bed. She is trying not to look at Newt, with his sleepy hair and tired eyes. Marie is trying not to look at the both of them.

Aris explains to the others what he told Cleo, he sees things in this place that don’t add up, that don’t make sense, that this place feels like a convenient lie. Thomas looks like he agrees. Newt doesn’t look so sure. “I’ve seen people, I think, I’ve seen the guards take things places, people places, and I haven’t ever seen them come back,” Aris says.

“Paradise, isn’t that the promise?” Winston asks, half sarcastically.

“I don’t think anyone leaves this place,” Aris says.

“I don’t trust Janson,” Cleo adds. “Not for a second, I didn’t trust him when we met him, and I trust him even less after today.”

“Maybe you are just a little paranoid Cleo,” Frypan suggests.

“No disrespect Fry, but when have I ever been wrong?” Cleo asks. “You have known me for so long, try and tell me you’ve known me to be wrong?”

“I can’t,” Fry admits.

“Did you just come here to scare us Cleo?” Minho asks, standing next to Marie now, between her and the door, the outside, like even in this he is trying to protect her.

“I wanted to see you, I don’t trust this place, and we felt strange,” Cleo says.

“You’re so used to seeing everything from your tower it must shake you up inside, that this isn’t your kingdom anymore,” Minho says. Cleo knows he doesn’t mean it in a mean way, she knows he is just being honest and not trying to upset her. But calling The Glade her kingdom reminds her of how Gally called her and Marie, _The Queens of The Glade_ , and how true that might have been. But they aren’t in The Glade anymore. She doesn’t have the same power here, and it scares her. Her power had always enabled her to keep control, keep them safe to the best of her ability and now, she felt lost.

“You can’t stay long,” Aris says. “They do rounds.”

“Okay,” Cleo nods at him. Newt is looking at Cleo, trying to see if anything from earlier made a difference. He is still worried about the incident in the cafeteria, she played it surprisingly chill for Cleo, but Newt remembers the first time a greenie came up in that box and wasn’t so good at listening to the rules. She nearly broke his arm, and Newt would vouch he probably deserved it, Cleo has never liked boys who had too much confidence and no real leg to stand on, he is grateful for so many reasons, that no one looked at Marie today. Because the consequences would have been so much more severe.

She shivers and Newt pulls the blanket from his bed and drapes it over her shoulders, he can’t understand why she won’t accept new clothes, but he doesn’t ask. Cleo doesn’t even recognise what is happening until she is enveloped in the warmth. She looks at him and he smiles at her, that soft morning smile and she can feel herself drifting into a sense of calm.

Marie is asking Thomas about his memories and Thomas is dancing around the huge factor that all his memories are heavily linked to being in love with her, because he can’t just say that. He tells her that he doesn’t remember everything, that the holes in his memory worry him, and she assures him it likely means they aren’t important. “You’d remember something worth remembering right?” Ma says.

“I mostly just remember you,” he says without thinking. Marie looks up at him, surprised and Cleo sees that as her cue to save Thomas. She pulls away from Newt who has leaned against the wall now, arm over her shoulder, making sure the blanket stays tightly wrapped around her.

“We should head back before someone notices,” Cleo says. Aris nods and takes the wedge they were using to keep the door open out, holding it open for the girls. Cleo looks back at the boys and so does Marie, it is hard to believe a departure until morning could feel so much like longing. “Goodnight boys.”


	6. It's Wicked

Minho seems to spend most of dinner leaning in front of Marie every time a stranger passes by, like he is trying to protect her for everyone, and only Thomas and Cleo seem to notice. Thomas tries not to be agitated while Cleo finds it the perfect mix of amusing and reassuring.   
“Isn’t it odd to you that we haven’t seen her?” Frypan asks.   
“I am not exactly sure why you care so much,” Minho says. “We don’t know Teresa, not really. And we have no reason except speculation to even be concerned for her.”  
“And we aren’t inclined for feel concerned,” Cleo says.   
“Cleo,” Ma says, “we are inclined to feel concerned for everyone.”  
“Are we?” she asks. Ma gives her a look and Cleo rescinds her comment. “I saw her yesterday, she looked fine.”  
“Where did you see her?” Thomas asks confused. Cleo gestures to the giant panel of glass in the hallway just as some doctors walk past, they have someone with them. Cleo stares at the glass and her hands start to shake.   
“Cleo,” Ma says being the only one to notice at first. The figure walking with them, Cleo see’s Gally, he is covered in blood and tired looking but walking.   
“Gally?” Cleo whispers. Newt looks at her from his place at the table next to Ma. Ma reaches across and grabs Cleo’s hand, pulling Cleo’s attention back to Marie.   
“It’s not real,” Marie says very quietly but Newt still hears it. Cleo shakes her head and the fog clears and she sees just another stranger with the doctors disappearing down a corridor. She smiles at Ma and nods a reassurance that she is back.   
“Thank you,” she mouths. Ma smiles back but it doesn’t reach the edges, she is so concerned and without a thing to do to make it better.   
“So, they call like eight kids a day?” Winston asks one of the other boys at the table.  
“Sometimes less, sometimes more, depends on how many they can take,” he responds.  
“How do they decide who goes?”  
“No one is sure.”  
“I don’t like that,” Thomas says.  
“I don’t trust it,” Cleo responds.  
“Can you two be less negative?” Newt asks. They both give him a look. “Okay…”  
Thomas looks at the guards in the door, as they are guiding the kids through. “I have an idea,” Thomas says.   
“A stupid one?” Cleo asks.  
“Probably,” Thomas says, getting up and walking over.   
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Cleo says seeing what is about to do before he does it. Thomas gets pushed back by the guards and Cleo doesn’t move, but Minho and Newt are quick to pull him back. Janson looks at them all, and back at Cleo. The look he gives Cleo is clear ‘get your boys under control.’ She just nods and he lets it go.  
“Did you think that would work?” Newt asks as they return to their seats. Cleo just smiles.  
“He wasn’t trying what they thought he was,” Cleo says, “were you?”  
“I’ll explain later” Thomas says. Cleo smiles but rolls her eyes.  
“You do find trouble Thomas.”  
“We have that in common at least.”

“What was Thomas doing?” Marie asks at on her bed.  
“Testing Janson,” Cleo says. “He doesn’t trust him almost as much as I don’t,” she sighs, “and he stole an ID badge.”  
“He did what?” Marie asks. “How did I miss that?”  
“Everyone missed it, that was the point.”

Aris sits in the vent, looking at Thomas argue with Newt. “You are looking for a fight Thomas, can’t you please just-,”  
“Will you tell Cleo that?” Thomas asks. Newt puts his hand in front of his mouth in a ditch attempt to stop himself from saying something he couldn’t take back.  
“You know Cleo makes sense, Cleo trust nothing, she never has,” Newt says.  
“I wonder why that is” Thomas says.   
“I don’t know what that is supposed to mean Thomas, but need I remind you, this place, this place you are so determined to believe is bad, they gave us beds and food, and clean clothes, and some of us haven’t had that in a very long time,” Newt says.  
“I know,” Thomas says.  
“Some of us a lot longer than others,” Newt points out.   
“I’m sorry, I just, I have to know,” Thomas says following Aris into the vents.  
“He could be right,” Minho says.   
“I know,” Newt says. “I just really don’t want him to be.”

“Ma,” Cleo says.   
“Cleo,” she responds.   
“Can I ask you something?” Cleo asks.  
“When have I ever said no to that?”   
“If we hadn’t had rules, if things had been different, if the world didn’t end,” Cleo says. “Do you think you would dating Minho?”  
Marie chokes. “Sorry what?” she asks. “Where is this coming from?”  
“I was just wondering,” Cleo says.   
“A very specific thing to wonder,” Marie points out.  
“I could have said any of them,” Cleo says.  
“But you said Minho,” Ma says. Cleo nods.  
“Yeah, yeah I did,” Cleo says. She looks at Marie, and for a moment, Cleo sat by the sink and Marie sat on the bunk, they just look like the teenage girls that they are. No WCKD, no Flare, no Glade, no Maze, no trauma, just two girls, sat across from each other, talking. “You didn’t answer my question.”  
“How am I supposed to answer that?” Ma asks. Cleo laughs and as she does the door opens and Dr Crawford and two nurses walk in.  
“Evening girls,” Crawford says. Ma looks immediately worried and Cleo starts to get to her feet. “Don’t get up on my account Cleo.” She looks at Marie. “Will you come with us?”  
“Where are we going?” Cleo asks.  
“Just Marie,” Crawford says.   
“No,” Cleo says simply. “Like I said before, where Marie goes, I go.”  
“There are just some things we need to sort out, and then we will bring her back to you,” Crawford says, “I assure you, she will be fine.”  
“You aren’t taking her without me,” Cleo says moving over to stand by Marie, but one of the nurses grabs her.   
“I am afraid Cleo you don’t really have a choice,” Crawford says as she takes Marie by the arm and pulls her out. Marie doesn’t fight, she wouldn’t know where to begin, but she looks so scared. Cleo fights and kicks her way out of the nurse’s grip.   
“You aren’t taking her,” Cleo says again. One of the nurses removes a syringe from her pocket.  
“Don’t make me sedate you sweetie,” she says. Cleo tries to push past them, to where Crawford has lead Marie down the hall but she gets pushed back into her room, and the nurses activate the lock. Cleo hammers on the door, screaming at them. Her lungs start to burn, but before she can do anything, they are gone from sight. And she is alone.  
Cleo paces up and down the room, her breathing uncontrolled, her whole body feels like it is on fire. She just keeps screaming, and calling out, even though she knows they can’t hear her anymore, that they are long gone. But without Marie there, her grip is slipping. She looks at her hands and she just sees blood. She punches the wall, hard.   
“Fuck!” she yells. But when she looks her hand now, it isn’t blood stained anymore, just already starting to bruise. Her hyperventilating makes her light headed and she sits down on the floor, staring at Marie’s bunk and then she sees it. The vent. She doesn’t even stop to think, she just crawls in.

Navigating the vents, Cleo decides, is harder than navigating The Maze. She turns corner after corner and looks through room after room, and she doesn’t have a clue where she is going. She was never a natural navigator, she would on occasion in the first few months in The Glade, get lost between the firepit and the med-tent. There were very few people who stayed alive long enough to still know that about her, and now there was no one. Alby was the last. She hadn’t really stopped to think about how Alby’s death had affected her, she didn’t have the time. She didn’t really have the time now, she had to find Marie, she had to protect Marie. And she was becoming more and more convinced she had to get them all out of this place. But first she had to find her way out of these vents. She turns a corner and right in her face is no other than Thomas. “What are you doing here?” he asks.   
“Looking for Aris,” Cleo says.   
“You found me,” Aris says from behind Thomas.   
“It’s Wicked Cleo, it’s all Wicked, it was always Wicked,” Thomas says.   
“They have Marie.”

Thomas pulls himself out the vent into the room and Newt is about to give him hell until he sees Thomas helping Cleo out after him. “What are you doing here?” Newt asks.  
“It’s Wicked,” Thomas says. “We never got out, this place it is still Wicked.”  
“How could you possibly know that?” Newt asks.  
“We saw it, Aris and I, we saw it,” Thomas says. “We need to get out, and we need to get out now.”  
“You need to calm down,” Minho says.   
“No,” Cleo says. “No, he doesn’t.”  
“Cleo,” Minho says very slowly. “Where is Marie?”  
“They took her, we were just talking and they came and they took her and I tried to go with her and they wouldn’t let me,” Cleo says her voice shaking. “And I crawled into that goddamn vent and it’s worse than The Maze, and we need to find her, okay, we need to find her because nothing can happen to her and I’m scared something is happening to her,” she is shaking and everyone can see it now. The once stone Cleo, the stoic and brave, has become this.   
“Where did they take her?” Minho asks.   
“I don’t know,” Cleo says. “But we have to find her.” Newt pulls her into a hug, holding her tight to try and stop the shaking. But he looks so worried. They all do. Thomas looks irrational, he looks ready for a fight. Cleo can hear Newt’s heartbeat and feel his breathing and in any other situation his arms around her, him this close, would feel like comfort, like home. But she just wants to scream.   
“I know where they might have taken her,” Aris says. “But we can’t be discrete about it.”  
“We are getting Marie and we are getting out of this place, tonight,” Newt says. “Where do we need to go?”   
“First we need to get into the corridor,” Aris says, moments away from climbing into the vent. However, Minho has other plans as he picks up a chair and smashes it into the door, full force and it just, gives into him, the hinge moving out of place enough that the locking mechanism simply breaks. “Or you could do that.”  
“You said we couldn’t be discrete,” Fry says.  
“No chance of that now.”  
“Come on,” Minho says. “We have to find Marie.”


	7. You, Me and The Devil Makes Three

Aris guides them down corridor after corridor until they reach a set of doors that seem overly secure, the feeling of dread goes all the way down Cleo’s spine. Newt has not taken his hand off hers the entire time but she is trembling. Her spare hand hovering constantly at hip level, wondering, waiting.

“You really think they might have taken her here?” Thomas asks and the concern in his eyes is enough to tip Cleo over the edge. She leans forward and yanks the key card from Thomas’s hand and opens the doors wide. She moves in so fast that she barely recognises what she sees for a moment.

The room is lit with a blue light, an eerie familiar blue light. Cleo doesn’t even see the bodies at first. She just hears it again, the giggling from the surveillance room, the soft voice of what she assumes is her father, singing.

_Aye here we be, on the bottom of the sea_

“Is that Teresa?” Winston asks checking one of the bodies. Their voices silencing the singing in her head for a moment, enough for her to see all the children strung up around her.

_Oh somewhere in the Southern Caribbean_

“No,” Thomas says. “It isn’t.”

_Together with each other for eternity_

Cleo walks up to a body and look at the tubes and the familiar blue liquid collecting in vials. “You don’t really think they brought her here, do you?” Newt asks.

“Are they alive?” Cleo asks.

“I don’t think so, but I am not sure if they are dead either,” Aris says, his eyes fixed on the girl. “I knew some of them.”

“I think you were right Aris,” Thomas says. “No one leaves.”

_You and me Donny, and the Devil makes three_

Cleo walks up to a body, so familiar. She stares up and she just sees him. Newt is watching her, as she looks up at stranger like she has known them her whole life. “Cleo, what do you see?” he asks.

“What do you mean?” she asks. She sees Gally, she always sees Gally.

“Cleo we can’t help them,” Minho says. “We have to find Marie.”

_On the cold and billowing sea_

“Minho,” she says. “Do you recognise them?”

“No,” Minho says looking at the stranger. She blinks but it doesn’t go away, it just Gally. “We have to go, she needs you.”

Such simple words. Three. Simple. Words. And it disappears, she sees the boy in front of her for what he is, a tragic outcome of what this place does. Just another person she cannot save. But not the person she let down.

“There is a door through here,” Aris says gesturing for them to follow him. They do.

Cleo keeps her eyes forward. She was lost in those vents for maybe an hour. She dreads to think what can happen in an hour. If anything happened to Marie, anything at all. Nothing could protect Wicked then. She would burn this place to the ground.

Cleo is scared, that is obvious. But she is scared for so many reasons. She is scared for Marie’s safety, she is scared for her wellbeing. She is scared because she knows Marie is scared to be alone, but also to leave Cleo alone. She knows the will be worrying every moment what Cleo is doing, and the idea that she is in pain because of Cleo’s absence haunts her in a way she didn’t know she could be haunted.

Cleo turns a corner and she sees a bed, a medical bed, and a girl asleep on it, hooked up to an IV. “Teresa?” she asks. Teresa looks at her, and she looks so alone. Cleo doesn’t have time to worry about Teresa right now, but she walks over and unhooks her from the equipment, and helps her to her feet, reluctantly.

“Cleo?” she asks. “You came for me?”

“Not exactly, get moving,” she instructs her. “We have to find Marie.”

“Marie went that way,” Teresa says pointing to a door. “Like two hours ago.”

Cleo turns to Winston, “You help Teresa,” she says, then looks to Newt, Thomas and Minho, who are looking at her, like awaiting instruction. Minho alone looks like he could fight whatever is on the other side of that door. “We do this quietly if we can,” Newt says.

“Fuck quiet,” Cleo says pulling her gun from inside her all in one.

“Damn,” Minho says.

“Let’s go get Marie,” she says and kicks the door open.


	8. Click

Marie is sat on a chair, in an aggressively white room. She is alone in this room and despite her slow reaction to them coming in, at first glance she sees fine. Doesn’t stop Cleo and Minho being so fast to her side. Cleo notices a leather strap holding her arm to the chair and she undoes it with speed. “Marie?” Minho asks. She looks at him, and she smiles.

“Ma,” Cleo says gently, and Ma slowly turns her head to look at her.

“You’re here,” she says.

“What’s wrong”? Thomas asks. Cleo looks around, she sees some empty syringes and paperwork.

“I think they dosed her with something,” Cleo says, she puts her hand on Marie’s face and gets her to meet her eyes. “Are you okay?” Marie giggles.

“Okay is incredibly relative,” Marie says, still giggling. “I don’t remember being okay a day in my life.”

“Oh no,” Cleo says. “Whatever they did it isn’t good.”

“Marie what did they do to you?” Thomas asks, pushing Minho aside.

“Janson wanted to ask me some questions,” Marie says. “But I didn’t know the answers, I don’t know why he thought would.” She sounds so dazed, so out of herself.

“Are you alright though, did they hurt you?” Minho asks, trying to push back against Thomas. Cleo could cut them both in this moment, for somehow making it about them.

“No, not really,” Marie says. Newt joins Cleo on her side of the chair. She smiles at them both. “You two,” she says. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too Ma,” Newt says. “Do we think this will last long?”

“I don’t know, but we don’t know what they did,” Thomas says.

“Are you in any pain?” Cleo asks. Marie looks at her.

“Always,” she says. Cleo’s heart drops.

“What do you mean always?” Newt asks.

“Since that very first night at The Glade, I’ve been in pain,” Marie says.

“Why?” Minho asks. It clicks, what Janson did to her, what he was trying to do, Cleo looks at the vials of unused liquids, the excessively bright room. He wanted answers, he wanted to know things. To him, Marie seemed the best and easiest target. She is soft and sweet and everyone trusts and adores her- if anyone knows anything it would be Marie, and if you could get anyone to talk it would be Marie.

“Don’t ask her that,” Cleo says. But it is too late. “She can’t lie.”

“Cleo,” Marie says. Cleo looks at Marie, confused.

“Wait, what?” Cleo asks, her heart breaking. “What did I do?” The rest of the room falls away, she can only see Marie, only hear her name fall from Marie’s lips over and over like a broken record.

“You were here first,” she says. “He could never love me, not when he already loves you.”

Both Thomas and Minho don’t look at Cleo now, exactly avoiding her gaze, and she hears it, what she had missed all this time.

_“I know nothing of how Marie feels,” Cleo says. “I know that, I am not naive enough to believe that Marie wouldn’t have feelings, I just seem to be acutely aware that for whatever reasons, she doesn’t share them with me.”_

_“You two share everything,” Minho says, looking towards Newt. “Maybe that’s the problem.”_

_“I would give anything in this world to see her happy, and that is what it means for me to love her. And that is what I mean when I say no one loves her like I do.”_

_“What if you don’t even know you’re hurting her, what if your existence is what hurts her?” he asks._

_“Yeah, I know what that is like, sitting back and watching someone you love just wanting the best for them, even if they go and fall in love with someone else.”_

_“No one is falling in love with anyone,” Cleo says._

_“No, they already have,” Thomas says. Cleo looks at Marie, and back at Thomas._

_“Marie hasn’t fallen in love with anyone Thomas, she would have told me,” Cleo says. Thomas looks at her._

_“Unless she didn’t,”_

“You knew,” Cleo says looking at Minho and Thomas. “You both knew.” Cleo looks at Marie like she could cry. “Ma, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because your happiness has always been more important than mine,” Marie says. “And he loves you, and you love him, so what does it matter?” She sounds so happy, so delirious, she likely isn’t aware at all what she is saying, but Cleo feels her body giving in, like she could fall down.

“Cleo,” Newt says crying to catch her, but she pulls away. He looks at her and she looks back.

“I,” Cleo starts to stammer. She doesn’t know what to do, what to say, for once she cannot do anything to help. She can’t fix it.

She hears it then, the other side of the door. Janson’s voice talking to someone else. “Get her ready to run,” Cleo tells Thomas, refusing to look at Newt anymore.

“Where are you going?” Newt asks. But she doesn’t respond, she just makes sure her gun is off safety.

“Where are you going Cleo?” Minho asks.

“I have to have a word with Director Janson.”


	9. Ava Paige

Cleo walks quietly and slowly, gun close to her side, following the sound of Janson’s voice. The closer she gets the louder and clearer the second voice becomes. “I want them sedated and prepped for harvest Janson.”  
“I understand that but I think I have an issue with one of the subjects. I used a sodium thiopental mixture, she should have just answered all my questions but she didn’t, she just stared at me,” Janson says. He is talking to a screen. On that screen in clear vision is Ava Paige.  
“You were supposed to be dead,” Cleo says, a rage welling in her stomach. She is focusing so hard, so hard on what is happening, trying not to think about Marie, about Newt, about everything that is going to come after this. Right now, she has one task.  
“Marie?” Ava asks pulling Cleo’s attention.  
“She seemed the best target,” Janson says. Ava sighs.  
“You really know nothing, do you Janson?” Ava sighs.  
“I think Cleopatra knows something, I thought Marie would be the best chance at getting that information, you know how Cleopatra can be, so is so stubborn,” Janson says. “But Marie knows nothing. But I am sure, the way Cleo looks at me, at this place, she is hiding something.”  
“There is a possibility some files were left behind at the facility, but I doubt she ever found them, and I doubt even more that if she did, she would be able to understand what they mean.”  
“You aren’t concerned?”  
“I am less concerned about what Cleo knows, I am more concerned about what Curie doesn’t,” Ava says.  
“Curie again?” Janson asks.  
“I’ve sent you the files Janson, maybe you can comprehend your own stupidity if you read them,” Ava says. “But yes, Cleo’s knowledge means nothing, but Curie’s means everything. Did you get the from the blood samples?”  
“From almost everyone,” Janson confirms.  
“Cleo refused,” Janson says.  
“She’s a child Janson,” Ava says. “You shouldn’t give her the chance to refuse. What Cleo knows or doesn’t is inconsequential, I am more worried about what Curie doesn’t know, the things Curie doesn’t know means Curie has to act on instinct, on the rest of their knowledge, priorities. Cleo is an outlier; she is something Curie won’t know what to do with. We need to update her information.”  
“Tell me how and I’ll update the information,” Janson reasons.  
“We can’t update what we don’t know.”  
“What don’t we know at this point?”  
“Cleo’s immunity status.”  
“She refused the blood sample, we can’t find that out.”  
“Of course, she refused, she is her father’s daughter after all. However you should have taken it anyway.”  
“I am trying to create a façade here, I can’t exactly force her,” Janson says.  
“That is exactly what you do with children who don’t know what is best for them,” Ava says.  
“You weren’t ever able to control her, what makes you think anyone has a chance?” Janson asks.  
“Cleopatra always had one fatal flaw, one thing that could control her if all else fails, she cares too much Janson,” Ava says.  
“You say that like it is a problem,” Cleo says stepping out into view, gun held out pointed at Janson. She wants to give everyone else enough time, enough time to help Marie, to get ready to escape.  
“Cleopatra,” Ava says. “How good to see you again.”  
“I would say the same but I make an effort not to lie,” Cleo says. She keeps her gun trained on Janson at all times. “Just a little reminder no one has gotten my bow yet.”  
“Looks like you don’t exactly need it,” Janson points out.  
“I’ve come for Marie,” Cleo says. “What did you do to her?”  
“Nothing dangerous, you are all very valuable after all,” Janson says. “I’ve just been trying to protect you.”  
“Don’t lie to me Janson, you aren’t very good at it and it bores me,” Cleo says.  
“I was told they found you covered in blood Cleopatra, there is an irony in that,” Ava says. “An irony you don’t understand because you don’t remember, but there is.”  
“I don’t really care to remember,” Cleo says.  
“So stoic, so brave, you impress me somewhat daughter, makes a nice change,” Ava says.  
“Don’t call me daughter,” Cleo warns her.  
“You always were so soft, never a fighter, never a survivor, but how the removal of comfort and all your memories has allowed you to grow. I almost don’t recognise you” Ava continues.  
“You get no credit for who I am,” Cleo says, growling.  
“No, most of that goes to your father, he was stubborn too, but too soft, too fragile, not willing to see bigger things, and The Flare took him in the end,” Ava looks directly at her, through the projection like she can see into her soul. “You’ve grown so much, and yet you are still so small Cleopatra.”  
“Whatever you think you know, you don’t know me,” Cleo says.  
“The Flare took your father, and it will take everyone else you care about Cleo, if you don’t help us,” Janson tries. Cleo laughs.  
“Help you?” Cleo asks. “Help you. Fuck. Yourself.”  
“So much spirit, such a shame it is so misguided,” Ava sighs.  
“I am misguided?” Cleo snaps. “You sent your daughter into The Maze.”  
“I did,” Ava admits. “But it needed to be done, and she wasn’t in there very long.” Cleo stares at the screen, she knows Ava is trying to get under her skin, but it is working. “Or did you mean you? Teresa was always the daughter you were supposed to be, do you feel that, even if you don’t remember a thing?”  
“You know, Ava,” Cleo says, looking at Janson, “you treated us all like pawns. I wonder how you would feel if you lost one of your own.”  
“You don’t have it in you girl, you never did,” Ava says.  
“You do not know what I am capable of, or what I have done,” Cleo says.  
“I am still trying to do what is best for everyone, I am trying to save people, I took an oath Cleopatra,” Ava says. “To find a cure, whatever the cost.”  
“What if the cost is too great?” Cleo asks. “Why wasn't I too much of a cost?”  
“Oh Cleo, Cleo, Cleo,” Ava sighs. “When Teresa suggested i put you in The Maze, I had never been prouder, because I realised, she saw what I saw, something that needed to be fixed, and she was willing to do whatever it takes to fix it.”  
“You see, Ava, if a single hair is out of place on Ma’s head, all the guns and all the gods could not save you. Between your army and my devotion, I think you stand at the disadvantage, so I don’t think you know at all what I am capable of,” Cleo says.  
“Of all the things Cleopatra, of all your hearts faults and motivators, Marie surprised me the most,” Ava says, “yet she seems to have dug herself the deepest in you. She will be your downfall.”  
“She is my greatest strength,” Cleo says. Looking at her mother, she understands everything she could possibly need to understand about her past. Her mother is not her mother, not really. All the pain, all the loss she has suffered, Marie has suffered, they all have suffered, it lays on Ava Paige’s hands. And Cleo is going to make her pay for that whatever it takes. For what she did, she has to pay.  
“We often think that about our greatest weakness,” Ava says hanging up. Left with just Janson Cleo looks at him, and he is watching the gun, still unsure of how she obtained it, if it is loaded or even if she would know how to shoot it.  
“Scared Janson, you should be,” Cleo says.  
“You are so unlike your mother,” Janson says. “So very much more like Mary.”  
Cleo’s strength wavers just for a moment, her hand slightly shaking, not enough to untrain her sights but enough of Janson to let a smile form on his lips. “Where do you think this is going to go Cleopatra?” he asks.  
“Don’t call me that.”  
“You think you will find Marie, you will escape into the world and live happily ever after? We will find you, and that’s even if you could get out-,”  
“Oh, we found Marie,” Cleo says. “I was just buying us time.” An arrow lands mere inches from Janson’s arm, pinning his jacket to the wall and Cleo glances over her shoulder to see Frypan with her bow in hand. “Nice shot.”  
“Let’s go,” he says. Cleo looks at Janson and flipping him off she rushes after Fry.  
Janson tugs at his arm and the fabric tears, reaching for something to call security. “Turn the bloody alarms on, you idiots, they are escaping.”


	10. A Risk You Want To Take?

“How the hell did you shoot like that?” Cleo asks.

“Pure luck,” Fry says, running. “Would you think less of me if I tell you I was aiming for the head?”

“No,” Cleo says, laughing a little. “Not at all Fry, not at all.”

“You have to move faster Cleo, we got to catch them up,” he says.

“How fast can they go?” Cleo asks. “Marie is… delirious.”

“Minho is carrying her,” he says.

“Shit, we need to move faster.”

They turn a corner and she sees them, most of them Teresa is talking loudly over the alarm, very confused about something, Minho is keeping Ma steady on her feet, Thomas and Newt are navigating, but Winston and Aris are nowhere to be seen. Fry and Cleo catch them up and Ma smiles at them both, clearly still being affected.

“Winston and Aris?” Cleo asks.

“Vents,” Thomas says. “Janson?”

“Alive unfortunately,” Cleo says, “and not far behind, we need to keep moving.”

“We need to keep out of sight,” Thomas says. “But Marie can’t exactly take the vents and-,”

“I’m not very good with closed spaces,” Teresa says.

“Or closing your mouth apparently,” Cleo snips back.

“Not the time to fight,” Newt points out. Cleo wants to glare at him but she can’t bare to look at him.

“We keep moving, fast, towards the exit, preferably,” Cleo says, taking Marie’s hand and guiding her forward.

They turn another corner and that’s where the trouble starts, they can hear him coming, one guard but one could be enough. They quicken the pace, Thomas taking hold of Marie’s hand so Cleo can take her bow back. She hangs it over her shoulder and before they make it through the next door she sees Minho pauses. “What are you doing?” She asks him, he doesn’t answer, he just starts to run back the way they came. “Minho!”

As the guard turns a corner, Minho runs right at him, slamming him full force into the wall, his head hits the concrete and he falls to the floor. “Shit, Minho,” Newt says. Minho looks back at them, smirking a little. Marie claps, and Minho smiles a little more.

“Keep moving,” Thomas reminds them. Minho leans in to whisper to Cleo.

“Think she will remember that?” he asks. Cleo rolls her eyes.

“Bigger issues Minho,” she responds, but for a brief moment Minho made her forget what was going on, everything she has to face once they are safe, and everything before, and she is grateful for that. Even if it doesn’t last.

Backing down a corridor until they reach the exit, Cleo keeps her hand hovering over her gun, the other her bow, unsure what night be needed. Yet ever so reluctant to shoot the gun, like it is intrinsically linked with something more personal. The five bullet lets in the cylinder and a weird reluctance to use them.

“Key card,” Cleo says.

“It isn’t working,” Thomas says. Janson turns the corner with guards and guns and smiles.

“Kids you really didn’t think that would work, did you?” he asks. “You are safe here, but out there, you don’t stand a chance, this isn’t The Maze anymore kids.”

“Don’t you think we know that?” Thomas asks, pointing the gun they took off the fallen officer at Janson. Janson doesn’t look concerned.

“I know what you think you understand Cleopatra, but you don’t,” Janson says.

“Don’t call me that,” Cleo warns him.

“You may have been Queens of The Maze, Cleopatra, but what you think you and little Marie, sweet little Marie, will be _Queens of The Scorch_ too? You won’t last a day out there, not between the heat and the cranks, you don’t stand a chance, and she won’t last a minute, a risk you want to take?” he asks.

“If you think I am dumb enough to fall for anything you have to say Janson, you haven’t been paying attention,” Cleo says.

“You’re cornered, don’t make it harder than it has to be,” he says.

“Oh, you think?” Cleo is taunting him. She doesn’t have a clue how they are getting out, she doesn’t know the plan, she doesn’t have a plan, but she knows that if she stands a chance, she needs to keep Janson talking.

“You’re outgunned, outnumbered,” he looks at them all, “you have nowhere to go.”

“One step closer Janson,” Cleo warns pointing the gun directly at his head, “and I will shoot you.”

“You didn’t before.”

“Marie wasn’t in direct danger before, did anyone tell you what I did last time she was?” Cleo asks. “I used this very gun. It isn’t one of your play guns Janson, this shoots you dead.”

“You’re all talk Cleopatra, I don’t fear you,” he says.

“And I don’t fear you,” Cleo responds. The door opens and Aris and Winston are stood on the other side beckon the others out. They found the run-around and the panic that crosses Janson’s face is so indescribably satisfying to Cleo that she can’t help it, Cleo smiles and starts to run.

“Close the doors,” Janson shouts. “You’re all idiots.” Thomas shoots the taser gun a few times before it jams.

“Thomas!” Minho yells at he throws the gun at Janson’s feet and runs as door starts to close.

“Last chance,” Janson warns them.

“Or what?” Thomas asks, and in one quick movement slides under the closing door.

Janson says something then. Something that seems just like a few unconnected words, but his eyes are on Marie, and once he says them it is like the drug starts to wear off. She stops giggling and starts to look like herself, her worried self. Cleo is fixated on the walkie in Janson’s hand, wondering who he is trying to contact, what he is up to. The others are more focused on getting out the compound, but Cleo’s eyes are stuck on Janson, as he smiles. There are lots of things that haven’t exactly added up right the last few days, bits and pieces that Cleo is still trying to make sense of, and what she hears Janson say next only makes the water more muddied. “Welcome back to us Curie, we missed you,” he says. The name rings in Cleo’s ears. For a moment she is back in the surveillance room, waiting for Gally. Back reading files filled with things she doesn’t understand, names and code names and protocols that all don’t make sense. But she read that name before, and she heard it, on the call with Ava, but she doesn’t know what it means. She doesn’t know who this person is that Janson is so eager to see, and Cleo isn’t sure she wants to find out. She has one job, protect Marie, especially from whoever or whatever Janson is trying to set on them.

The next thing Cleo recognises happening is she is in the sand, outside the facility and into The Scorch, Fry practically dragging her up the dune. “You back with us Cleo?” Fry asks. Cleo looks around and sees Minho helping Marie through the storm. Cleo can hear the guards after them, the flashing of torch light, and she keeps low but keeps trying to see Marie through the mess of sand and dark.

“Yeah, yeah I am back” Cleo says, but in the dark, in the sandstorm, out here, in the chaos of it all. She isn’t really. Because even in the sand, even in the storm, she sees him. She see’s Gally.

_-Flashback-_

_“Cleo, right?” the greenie asks. Cleo looks down at him, a few days he’s been here, and he is helpful and he is strong, and she has no reason to not talk to him, so she nods and climbs down from her watch tower._

_“Yeah, it’s Cleo,” she says. He smiles a little and she can’t understand why. “Remember your name yet?”_

_“Not yet” he says. She nods._

_“It’ll come to you, come to all of us,” she says._

_“But nothing else ever does?” he checks._

_“Not really,” she says._

_“But I heard you singing,” he says._

_“I am a special exception,” Cleo says._

_“I could have guessed that,” he says. She gives him a look._

_“Um, greenie,” she says._

_“I wasn’t,” he rubs his hand on the back of his neck, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to sound-,”_

_“No need to get flustered,” Cleo says. “But if you want me to hit you around the head to see if that jogs your memory, talk to me like that again.”_

_“Message received,” he says._

_“They give you a job yet?” she asks._

_“Builder,” he says. She looks him up and down again, nodding._

_“That adds up,” she says._

_“Can I ask you a question?” he asks._

_“You just did,” Cleo says. “But go on.”_

The memory starts to deteriorate.

_“Why’d you shoot me?” he asks._

_“That’s not what you asked…” Cleo says._

_“Cleo, why’d you have to do that?” Gally, who still looks as young as the day they met pulls his hand from his stomach and it’s covered in blood._

_“Gally I-,”_

_“Is that my name?” he asks._

“Cleo,” Winston says, shaking Cleo back out of the dream state.

“I’m here,” she says.

“Then act like it.”

Marie wades through the storm, Minho’s arm around her, protecting her, helping her move forward. The fog clears mostly from her mind and the gravity hits in. She is staring into the distance because she is scared to look behind her, at Cleo. She can’t face what just happened. It was always a possibility, there was always the tiniest chance that one day Cleo would find out about her feelings for Newt, one day. But in all her worst nightmares, Marie had never pictured anything quite like that. Nothing so painful, so brutal. Marie was never the one to tell her, no matter what, and she thought that had made her cowardly in all these nightmare situations, but now, being the one to tell her felt so much worse. And not only did she tell her, she told Newt, not just of her own feelings, but of Cleo’s and even if she couldn’t control it, even if she didn’t mean to say it, even if she didn’t know what she was saying that was no fair of her. She knows Cleo won’t blame her, and that begins to spiral a whole other bunch of problems. She knows Cleo so well, so painfully well, there is not a thing Cleo wouldn’t do for her and she knows it, and she can’t bare to look at her. Because looking at her is acknowledging what just happened, and what might happen as a consequence, and all Marie ever wanted was to see people happy, and she feels she has torn them apart. And Cleo… especially Cleo, she can’t bare that thought. The idea that she has done something that cannot be undone, said something that cannot be unsaid and the consequences are yet to reveal themselves, but Ma knows, there will be consequences, and they scare her. Because for Marie, Cleo would give up anything, even if she didn’t want her too…

They make it to dip in the sand, where the rooftop of a building is slightly uncovered and they lean away from the storm. For the first time Cleo can see Marie clearly now, and she looks tired, and concerned and Cleo goes to speak to her but she won’t meet her eye. Something dawns on Cleo. Marie knows what she said and the serum is wearing off. Getting Marie to even look at her, yet again talk to her, is going to be difficult. Especially the way Cleo reacted. But Minho has her safe for now, she can see that. And for now, that’s enough.

“Aris,” Cleo whispers and Aris looks at her. She smiles at him. “Thank you.” He looks surprised, like no one had thanked him, and he hadn’t expected anyone to. Aris is a good kid, and Cleo can tell that, even if the others aren’t so sure, without him, they wouldn’t be where they are, and for better or worse, they wouldn’t have gotten out without him.

“No problem at all,” he says. Teresa in her ‘Teresa-like’ wisdom without thinking crawls through a broken window into the building mostly submerged in sand.

“What the-,” Cleo starts. “Teresa, come back.” When she doesn’t, kicking herself, Cleo follows her in, and the others do the same.


	11. I Am Even Rooting For You

After Thomas tries his best to explain what we saw, what he and Aris found before Cleo arrived, Cleo sighs, knowing that the eyes on her mean it’s her turn. “Some of us are immune, Janson was being told to get us ready for harvest, I assume that’s what the bodies were, not dead but not alive either,” Cleo says. “Ava seems to think she can use us to find a cure, for The Flare, she thinks there is something in our blood, something linked to our immunity. She thinks she can use it, but she also doesn’t care the cost, not at all. She would see us all strung up like medicine bags if she had her way. She wants us all like the kids in the room. Not dead, but not alive.”

“What happened with Janson?” Newt asks. Cleo doesn’t look at him.

“I’m more worried with what happened with Marie, Janson was trying to interrogate her, I don’t know what he expected her to know, but he thinks I know it,” Cleo looks to Marie, who now has come down from her happy state entirely. “Do you remember what he asked you?”

“I remember everything,” Marie says before putting a hand over her mouth.

“I don’t think the truth aspect has really worn off yet,” Minho says. Cleo nods, knowing not to push it anymore.

“I’m also worried about how smug he looked at the gates, I don’t know who he was talking to on that walkie,” Cleo says, “but the way he looked at Marie, it felt like a threat.”

“You were threatening them,” Teresa points out. “He was going to retaliate.”

“Do you want to explain where you have been for the last few days Teresa?” Cleo claps back.

“I don’t really remember,” Teresa says.

“Convenient,” Cleo says.

“We can’t fight amongst ourselves,” Winston says. “Not now, we managed in The Glade, we can manage here, but we have to cooperate.”

“Winston is right,” Newt says. He looks to Thomas. “So, what’s the plan?”

“I don’t have one,” Thomas admits.

“So, we followed you out here, and we have no plan?” Minho asks.

“That’s not exactly true,” Aris says, “Thomas and I heard something, Janson was having a conversation with some of the guards, about locating a resistance in the mountains, Right Arm, I know it sounds farfetched.”

“Honestly Aris I would trust whatever you had to say right now,” Cleo says. Aris smiles a little. Newt looks bothered, maybe because Cleo is not looking at him, maybe because Cleo is completely trying to ignore his existence, maybe another reason.

“So we are just going to head to the mountains, that makes so much sense,” Newt says dripping sarcasm.

“You got a better idea?” Cleo demands. They look at each other for a moment, before both looking away.

“Look around you,” Frypan says. “This place, people lived here.”

Cleo pays attention to her surroundings for the first time and she sees it all. They are surrounded by supplies, sleeping quatres, clothes. Cleo picks up a torch from the table and throws it in the air gently catching it before turning it on. “Stock up?” Winston asks. Cleo nods.

“Grab anything and everything that could be useful,” Cleo agrees. Slowly they all start to rustle through belongings. Trying to keep her distance from Newt and trying to respect that Marie isn’t in a place where she can talk to her right now, Cleo walks out the room they are in and starts to look through some items. She finds a plaid shirt and holds it up to the light, nodding. She notices she is being watched through the glass and she shines the light at the boys. “Something to say?” she asks.

“Nope,” Winston says putting his hand up in surrender.

“Good,” Cleo says before moving further into the building. Newt throws Winston a look.

“What?” he asks.

“Not cool,” Newt says.

“Well, if the rules suddenly don’t apply, which seemingly they don’t, a guy can dream,” Winston says. “Or are you mad because you think you have some kind of dibs.”

“I am going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Newt says. “The girls are-,”

“We aren’t in The Glade anymore,” Winston nods to Minho who is helping Marie try to find a jacket. “I’m not stupid enough to think between Thomas and Minho I stand a chance with Marie.”

“Stop talking,” Newt warns him, “just stop.”

Cleo opens a tool box and amongst some useless tools she finds a hammer which she pockets instinctively. Pushing some items aside something catches her attention and she leans into a cupboard and finds a small broken ring, the main setting is a five-piece gemstone holder, but only two of the gemstones remain and the actual structure of the ring is broken, making it unwearable, but the stones catch her eye. Something about them, so simple, so different, yet so well sat next to each other, she pockets it and keeps rummaging. “Can I ask you something?” Minho asks, leaning on the doorway. Cleo looks around, reminding herself she is the only person in the room.

“Sure, I guess,” Cleo asks, she is still mad at him, but she knows she doesn’t have a right to be.

“Marie,” he says. “You think she remembers?”

“Why do you think she is avoiding me?” Cleo says. Minho doesn’t really know what to say. “Look keep an eye on her, please, I know she doesn’t want to be around me right now, and I don’t know how long that will last, but her guilt will be eating at her, and I just… I need to know she is in safe hands.”

“I will look after her, I will always look after her,” they both glance to where Marie is stood with Thomas, she is using a hair tie she has found to pull her hair into a ponytail and Cleo can’t help but think that is odd.

“Go on,” Cleo insists, pushing him in that direction. “Go look after her.”

After a while she watches Minho, Thomas and Marie disappear out of sight. She picks up a small rucksack and dusts it down. She feels a tap on her shoulder ands she turns around, hammer in hand, to see it’s Teresa. “You don’t like me,” she says.

“Congratulations, you are aware of the most basic fundamentals of this relationship,” Cleo says.

“I understand why, it is easy to see me as the villain, I get that, and if you need to see me as the villain, then fine,” she says. “I can take it.”

“I don’t just see you as the person who helped kill so many of my friends Teresa,” Cleo says. “I know what you did.”

“What did I do?” Teresa asks.

“You sent me into The Maze,” Cleo says. A realisation hits Teresa’s face, like she is remembering it. “And I think you did it to impress my psycho mother.”

“Ava only did what she thought was best,” Teresa says.

“Oh, don’t try that,” Cleo says. “I don’t want to hear that, greater good bullshit, especially not from you.”

“I don’t know what you think you know about me, but Cleo, I promise I don’t have bad intentions with you, I have no malice,” Teresa says.

“Maybe not now,” Cleo says.

“Not even then, I don’t think I ever wanted to hurt you,” Teresa says. “I am even rooting for you.”

“What does that mean?” Cleo asks. Teresa nods to the left and Cleo sees Newt pulling a box from a shelf. “Oh, don’t even…”

“What?” Teresa asks. “You two seem-,”

“Please don’t,” Cleo says. “Just… be anywhere but here, okay Teresa? Anywhere but here.”

“I don’t want to end up like that,” Minho says.

“You won’t,” Thomas says. “I won’t let anything happen to any of you.”

“That’s a mighty promise Thomas,” Minho points out. “I don’t think I could promise that.”

“No, but you can promise to keep her safe, can’t you?” Thomas says, looking at a light that doesn’t work.

“With my life,” Minho says glancing to Marie who is investigating what looks like a sleeping area.

“Then just focus on that,” Thomas says.

“Thomas-,”

“Minho, what matters is keeping her safe and happy, whatever that means,” Thomas cuts him off. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Minho nods.

“We are good,” Thomas says. “As long as she is.”

“Okay,” Minho nods.

“Why would they leave?” Marie asks, picking up a teddy bear, covered in dust.

“I think the more pressing question, is where did they go?” Thomas asks. “And what happened to their power, they had it, not everything is battery operated.”

“Worth looking,” Minho says.

“This place unnerves me,” Marie says.

“Sure you aren’t just on edge?” Thomas asks.

“Could you blame her?” Minho asks. “You scared Marie?”

“No,” Marie says trying to laugh it off.

“Well, at least the serum has worn off,” Minho laughs. Ma falls quiet. “I didn’t mean-,”

“It’s okay Minho, I know.”

Cleo knocks over a glass and it shatters. “Fuck,” Cleo mutters.

“You should be more careful,” Newt says coming into the room.

“What is this, question Cleo hour?” Cleo mumbles.

“Can we?”

“No,” Cleo says.

“Look, I knew too,” Newt says. Cleo looks at him.

“You knew what?” Cleo asks.

“About Marie,” Newt says.

“Am I the only person who didn’t?” Cleo asks, she kicks the chair nearby and it topples over. It knocks into something that Cleo isn’t saw she has ever seen but recognises instantly. She walks over to it and starts dragging it out from under the mess.

“I didn’t know, but I kind of had a feeling and then Thomas confirmed it,” Newt says.

“What is your point Newt?” Cleo asks putting the leatherbound case on the table next to her.

“I didn’t understand why she never said anything,” Newt says. Cleo realises where this is going. “Until she said what she said.”

_“Ma, why didn’t you tell me?”_

_“Because your happiness has always been more important than mine,” Marie says. “And he loves you, and you love him, so what does it matter?”_

“Newt what are you trying to achieve here?” Cleo asks, hand hovering over the case latch.

“Why would she say that? Why would she think that?” he asks.

“Think what?” Cleo asks. “That you could have feelings for me? I don’t know, can’t exactly pin point where she got that impression.” She sounds angry but really she is just frustrated. She can’t win right now, she can’t talk to him about this because she had to admit to feelings she never wanted to admit to, she has to face the idea that not only does she love him, he who couldn’t love her back- but also that in loving him, she has been hurting Marie all this time.

“Cleo,” he says. “I do have feelings for you.”

Cleo says nothing. She is stunned into silence. Instead, she opens the case, it’s an old record player, not too old, because she flicks the side and the batteries show power. She reaches for the first record she can grab and she places it on the player, slowly lowering the pin.

“Cleo, I need you to say something,” Newt says. The music starts to play quietly, the music crackling into sound.

_Emily will find a better place to fall asleep_

“Cleo,” he reaches for her hand and surprisingly she takes it, pulling him over to her.

_She belongs to fairy tales that I could never be_

“You never would dance with me,” Cleo says quietly. “I always thought maybe you were too embarrassed to, I couldn’t ever drag you in front of the fire like that, not even when everyone else left. I thought maybe it was me, maybe you just didn’t want to dance with me.”

_And the future haunts with memories that I could never have_

“I was scared to dance with you,” Newt says. “Being close to you always scared me.”

_And hope is just a stranger wondering how it got so bad_

“Why?” Cleo asks. Newt pulls her in close to his chest, putting his hand on her waist. She blushes a little, not actually expecting him to dance with her. And certainly not expecting him to dance with her like this.

_I die each time you look away_

“Because of that day in the woods,” Newt says.

_My heart my life will never be the same_

“I thought you were going to kiss me that day,” Cleo says. Newt looks at her, so close to him, moving slowly, delicately to the music. In the very low yellow torchlight, he remembers all the times she offered her hand at the fire. He wonders how he had missed it.

_This love will take my everything_

“The rules,” he says.

_One breath one touch will be the end of me_

“The rules,” she replies. The guilt coming back. The rules seemed so important until the moments in which they didn’t. Moments like that, when she wanted to be kissed. Or moments like with Gally, when she wanted to feel something.

_You could be the final straw that brings me back to earth_

“I was going to,” he says. “I wanted to.”

_Ever waiting airports full of the love that you deserve_

“Why didn’t you?” she asks.

_Wishing I could find the rain to wash away the past_

“Because I was afraid,” he admits. She feels her hand shaking.

_Knowing that my heart will break but at least the pain will last_

“Why?” she asks.

_I die each time you look away_

“Because you are you Cleo, and I can never tell what you feel,” Newt says.

_My heart my life will never be the same_

“Newt of course I have feelings for you, how could I not have feelings for you?” Cleo asks. “I have torn myself apart because I have feelings for you.”

_This love will take my everything_

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” He asks, looking at her, not looking away for even a moment. She can hear his heartbeat as loud as her own.

_One breath one touch will be the end of me_

“How could I? After…”

_Emily will find a better place to fall asleep_

“I’m sorry.”

_Maybe she will save me in the oceans of her dream_

“I’m sorry,” Cleo says pulling away. “Because I can’t do this.”

_Or maybe someday love_

“Do what?” he asks.

_Or maybe someday love_

Cleo looks at him. He knows what she means but he doesn’t want to believe her. But the truth is Cleo would never do anything that could hurt Marie, and this, this would hurt Marie. She knows that now. She knows why Ma never said anything. Ma knew that if Cleo knew she would give him up in a heartbeat, and Ma only wanted Cleo to be happy. But Cleo knows she can’t hurt Ma, not even for this. Marie comes first, no matter what that means. Newt knows it, he knows it, but Cleo doesn’t want to have to say it and he doesn’t want to hear it. “Newt it doesn’t matter how I feel, it doesn’t, I can’t-,” she is cut off by the generator kicking in, all the lights coming on at once.

“What the…”

“Minho, what did you do?” Thomas asks. Marie jumps back as crank behind the fence lurches towards her.

“Shit,” Minho says, grabbing Marie’s arm.

“Run,” Thomas says.

“Run.” 


	12. Heroic Nonsense

“Power I guess,” Cleo hears Winston say.   
“Guys need I explain the many reasons power is likely a really bad thing?” Cleo asks as she and Newt join Fry, Winston, Teresa and Aris in the main room. “Not only are WCKD looking for us but we don’t know what else is really out here.”  
“The cranks,” Aris responds.   
“Exactly,” Cleo says. Aris shakes his head and grabs her arm. Newt watches him do so and looks puzzled.  
“When did we all get so comfortable?” he starts. But Cleo is focused on what Aris is pointing her too, in the distance she can see what seems to be Minho.  
“No, the cranks,” Aris says.   
“Oh shit,” Cleo says.   
“Run,” Minho says coming more clearly into view with Thomas and Marie. “Run.”  
“Yeah,” Cleo says, throwing the bag over her shoulder. “I think we need to run.”  
“Go, go,” Thomas yells as he starts to catch up. Cleo grabs Marie’s arm, pulling her along with her as she moves.  
“What the hell are those things?” Winston asks.  
“I will take a wild guess and say the cranks Janson was talking about,” Minho says,  
“You think?” Cleo asks sarcastically.   
“We don’t have time for sass Cleo,” Thomas says. Cleo hands Marie the hammer and she looks at it as they move and for a moment, she doesn’t look like herself.  
“Can I have the gun?” she asks. Cleo looks at her confused.   
“Pardon?” she asks. Marie looks back at her, the hammer in hand, she looks like herself again.   
“I didn’t say anything,” Ma says. Cleo keeps a hand on her bow and starts to dig her nails into her palm with the other hand. Trying to get a grip on reality in such chaos is seemingly harder than she expected.   
“Aris, watch out!” Marie yells. Aris jumps over a broken piece of rubble and picking up what looks like a broken piece of scaffolding he knocks one of the cranks back.   
“Impressive,” Cleo says. Aris smiles, but is immediately distracted by Teresa getting backed up onto the broken escalator. Teresa kicks the creature back and it falls down the steps, landing on its neck but not stopping. Thomas jumps over the barrier to try to help.  
“Go up and around, I’ll see you all up there,” Thomas says. Cleo nods turning to make sure Minho has an eye on Marie, and finds she is already halfway up the stairs with him.  
“Cleo come on,” Ma yells at her. Newt grabs Cleo’s hand and drags her up the steps. Cleo stands at the top of the staircase and placing an arrow in her bow in a very slick and quick movement she skewers one of the cranks Thomas is fighting off.   
“Thanks,” he says.  
“No problem greenie, just saving your ass, again,” she says with a smirk. Thomas helps Teresa over the barrier at the top and they start running the straight corridor. Cleo turns to take out another that is climbing the stairs, but Newt grabs her and insists she keeps running. “I can run and shoot,” Cleo says overtaking him. “I am sure you can but-,” he is cut off by a crank coming from the broken class to their right and lunging at him.   
Cleo freezes. She is barely any distance from Marie and Thomas, the others slightly further up but she can’t move. Her grip on reality slipping again as the crank drives at Newt transforms into Gally. What to everyone else looks like a fight between a friend and a creature, to Cleo looks so very different. “Gally, stop,” she says her voice barely even a whisper, but Marie still hears her.  
Thomas quickly realising that Cleo isn’t moving rushes over to Newt, grabbing the crank and pulling it off Newt, and throwing it off the ledge, it smashes through the glass and makes a screeching sound all the way down. “It isn’t real,” Marie says, grabbing Cleo. “Cleo, it isn’t real.”  
“Thanks Tommy,” Newt says as Thomas helps him to his feet. Newt and Thomas both look at Cleo, trying to understand what happened. Marie shakes Cleo and she looks at her, finally back with them. “It wasn’t him, I know what you think you saw, it wasn’t him, it can’t be him,” Ma says.  
“What was that Cleo?” Thomas demands.  
“Because he is dead,” Cleo says, focusing just on Ma.   
“Because he is dead,” Ma repeats softly.   
“And we will be dead if we don’t keep moving,” Teresa yells down at them. Cleo fights all the urges she has to say something smart back and just keeps moving. But with the fog clearing she can’t help but replay the situation in her head, and even in all her delusion, one thing does not make sense. She could have sworn she heard Marie tell everyone to just leave Newt. She must have heard her wrong, there is a lot of things Marie does when she panics, but leave someone behind, especially someone like Newt, is not one of them. Ma would sooner die. So, Cleo must have just misheard, must have got lost in the fog of crazy she seems to keep being pulled into.   
They manoeuvrer a difficult set of rooms, and they can all hear the cranks coming up behind them, but they just keep running. Minho helping Marie, Newt looking at Cleo trying to understand what the hell just happened and Cleo trying so hard to focus on not being crazy.   
“Cleo,” Thomas says as she passes most of the group, trying to keep ahead but also trying not to look at Newt who she can feel watching her now like she can feel the lump in her throat from the panic.   
“I don’t want to hear it Thomas,” she says. “We aren’t safe enough for you to yell at me for things you don’t understand.”  
“I just,” Thomas moves to stand in front of her.   
“Are you okay?” he asks.   
“No,” Cleo says simply. “But I will not be a hindrance.”  
“That’s not what-,” Thomas doesn’t get a chance to finish as more cranks come into view and the fast pace turns back into a run.   
Aris opens a door to what seems to be the outside and they all start moving through, Cleo stands in the doorway with Winston, counting everyone out and both being quick to try and shut the door on the cranks, but some get their arms in the way.   
“Move Cleo, I am right behind you,” Winston tries.  
“I am not buying that heroic nonsense,” Cleo says, pushing her back onto the door as they try to push against it.   
“Cleo you need to,” Winston tries to insist, but a crank gets it’s claws into his stomach and in a gasp of pain he loses the grip on the door. Falling slightly more of the cranks reach from him.   
“Thomas!” Cleo yells in instinct. Thomas who has gotten not quite as far as the others turns to see both Cleo and Winston still at the door.   
“Shit,” he says as he and Newt despite their better interest rush back to help. Newt helps Cleo hold the door while Thomas pulls Winston out of the creature’s grasp. And then Thomas almost carrying Winston, they run.  
Minho helps Ma down off a ledge and Cleo and the boys slip down next to them all, breathless but sheltered by the rock. They can hear the cranks moving around above head, but they just say close to the rock and quiet, so very quiet. Marie looks at Winston and her expression is strange, Cleo cannot read it, it is almost an indifference she has never seen on her before. Cleo reaches into her bag and quietly pulls out some of the medical supplies she picked up inside. Minho, who still has an arm between Marie and the open word, as if he could simply hold it all back if he needed to, looks to Cleo. Cleo just places a finger to her lips and quietly tries to clean Winston’s wound.   
“That was a dumb move you pulled,” Cleo tells Winston quietly. Winston nods.   
“I have to agree with you,” he says. Once she is done, she tries to look up to see what is happening but Thomas grabs her sleeve and yanks her back under the shelter.   
“Don’t” Thomas says. Cleo wants to make a point but decides against it, if it wasn’t for Thomas, she doesn’t know what would have happened with Newt, so right now, all she can be is grateful.   
The darkness starts to set in and Cleo starts to try to built a small fire in the dark of the overhang, something small enough to not get any attention, but just something to keep them warm. She pulls a wooden sign from a bit of broken fencing and the wire comes away with it. Sighing she sits down and starts to slowly unpick the curled wire, it looks so shiny despite the dulling nature of the sand.   
Once the fire has started to do more than flicker, she turns back to the group and notices Ma has gone back to avoiding her gaze. She is sat with Thomas and Minho, nearly asleep from the exhaustion of the day. Cleo shivers leaning in to the flame. Newt doesn’t even ask he just takes a blanket from his bag and drapes it over her shoulders. She looks at him, and as much as she wants to keep to her point, she just holds the blanket open, offering to share. He moves next to her and she drapes the excess over him.   
No one says a word for a really long time. Cleo starts to fiddle with the metal from the fence, curling it around her wrist and around itself, the curls it in long spirals around her finger and then she remembers the broken ring in her pocket. She glances to Ma who has fallen asleep leaning on Thomas. Thomas is also asleep and peaceful looking. Minho have moved closer to the fire.   
“I understand now,” Minho whispers over the fire. “When you said you would cease to exist. I get it. I understand what you mean.”  
“Ma wouldn’t,” Cleo says. “She told me once you can’t keep sacrificing yourself for others and calling it love.”  
“And yet that’s what you do,” Newt says. She looks at him, and he knows as well as she does that this night by the fire is not the start of anything, it is rather a prolonged end.   
“We do odd things for love,” Cleo says.  
“Do you think love is fair?” Minho asks, trying not to look at Cleo.  
“I think people fall in love with the wrong people all the time, or maybe they don’t, maybe they just love people they aren’t supposed to be with,” Cleo says. “Which is worse maybe.”  
No one else speaks and Cleo takes the broken ring from her pocket and holds it close to the fire. A small white and red stone, and a light pink stone sit in the setting of the ring. “Rose quartz,” Cleo says.  
“How do you know that?” Newt asks.   
“The properties,” Cleo says. “It isn’t clear but it isn’t solid, the texture, the veins. There is a lightness too it, it’s supposed to represent love and hope.”  
“You don’t remember your history but you remember that?” Minho asks. Cleo pulls a book from her bag, a book on crystals.   
“I found this while rummaging, I was reading for a good twenty minutes before I was interrupted,” Cleo says.  
“You can read,” Minho teases. “Weren’t you supposed to be looking for supplies?”  
“Weren’t you supposed to not be setting a bunch of creatures on us?” Cleo retorts. “Look, I barely get a moment to myself, I found something pretty, I wanted to look into it.”  
“What about that one?” Newt asks. Cleo looks at the other stone.  
“I don’t know,” Cleo admits. “It’s a mystery, even to itself.”  
“I don’t think the rock has feelings,” Minho says. Cleo rolls her eyes and taking an arrow she picks the rocks out of the broken ring. “So, if you think something is pretty, and you break it?”  
“It was already broken,” Cleo says, holding both the stones in her hand as she tosses the setting into the fire.  
“Then why bother picking it up?” Fry asks joining the conversation.  
“Just because something is broken,” Cleo glances at Newt, “doesn’t mean it can’t have a purpose.”  
“Oh, she is being all deep now,” Fry mocks. “You should hear how she talks when she is cooking, she gets like this all the time.”  
“Shut up,” Cleo says, as she starts to twist the stones in the metal wire. “You boys understand nothing.”  
“I will agree to that,” Minho laughs, moving back away from the fire.   
As Cleo works on her stones everyone else starts to join Marie and Thomas in sleep. Except for Newt, who sits next to her, in the warmth. She snaps the wire into two pieces and Newt watches as she wraps each stone individually. “Two very different things, cut from the same cloth,” Newt says.  
“You know why I can’t, don’t you?” Cleo asks.   
“You love her.”  
“More than I thought I knew how to love.”


	13. No Thinking

Marie is the first to wake up, she looks around and notices just how quiet everything seems out here, so strange. She pulls herself to her feet hoping some movement might lift the fog from her brain, it feels like she is missing something, some dark memory she can’t reach, more so than usual. Which is particularly strange considering how clearly, she remembers everything else. Janson. The white room. What she said. What she did. What came after.  
She looks at Cleo who is stirring, she looks like she fell asleep next to the fire, because she is basically laying on Newt. Marie isn’t sure how to feel, until she notices Cleo wake up and in some kind of panic pull away from him. Between the chaos yesterday Marie didn’t have time to observe just how Cleo was responding to Newt. But in the sunrise, it seemed oddly clear. She shoves him and he wakes up, all sleepy and dazed.  
“You fell asleep,” Cleo mumbles.  
“You fell asleep on me first,” Newt says.  
“Don’t let me do that,” Cleo says. Newt goes to adjust Cleo’s messy hair and she pulls back and looks away. “Newt-,”  
“Cleo can we walk?” Ma asks, the irritation taking over everything else. Cleo looks so surprised, so confused but scrambles to her feet to happily oblige. They walk a little distance from where the others are waking up and Ma turns to her, feeling guilt and not wanting to talk at all, but feeling like she has to. “What was that?”  
“That wasn’t what it looked like,” Cleo says quickly trying to defend herself.  
“Really, because it looked like the guy you’ve been in love with, for literally years, was trying to reach out to you and you pushed him away,” Ma says.  
“Well, actually yeah that is more or less exactly what it was,” Cleo says. Ma clips her around the head. “Ouch.”  
“You’re an idiot, an actual idiot,” Ma says. Cleo just stares at her, how un-Ma like she is being.  
“But-,”  
“Don’t even try,” Ma cuts her off. “You love him, he loves you, you have a chance to be happy.”  
“But you-,”  
“This is my problem, my issue to work through, that’s why I never said anything, because you do this, I always knew you would do this, you can’t just be happy, can you?” Ma asks.  
“Not if it hurts you,” Cleo says.  
“You not being happy hurts me Cleo,” Ma says. “You can’t just give him up like that, it is no good to any of us.”  
“I choose your happiness Ma-,”  
“That’s so dumb. Do you actually think I could ever be with him, he wants you, I would always know that, do you think that would make me happy? Do you think that is fair on any of us?”  
“It’s not that simple,” Cleo says.  
“It is that simple.”  
“No it isn’t.”  
“Why not?”  
“Because of Gally,” Cleo says. Marie’s expression changes. “A lot of what I do, I do out of love for you Ma, it is my reason to live, most days the only reason. I do a lot of things because I think about you, and you only. But this isn’t just a you situation Ma, yes, I would never be with him if I thought for a second it would hurt you, I couldn’t. I couldn’t bare it. But I also can’t be with him knowing that I would choose you, again and again, if I had to, over him. That isn’t fair on him either. Gally is proof that it doesn’t matter if I love someone, because I love you more. So before you try to blame yourself for this, know it isn’t just you I am considering in this. It isn’t fair on him either. I’m a mess. I let myself fall in love to distract myself from being in love Marie, I am no good for him, not even a little bit. But you, you are.”  
“Cleo I couldn’t be with him,” Ma says. “I-,”  
“Sometimes I just wish I could forget it all, Newt, Gally, how I feel, but it isn’t that simple, I can’t just remove those memories and start again,” Cleo sighs.   
“You don’t mean that, Newt and you, you should be-,”   
“Forget about Newt for a minute okay,” Cleo says. She pulls the rings she was fiddling with by the fire from her pocket. She takes the rose quatz and places it in her had. “I know how you must be feeling, I know what it feels like to tell someone something that hurts them, I know what it feels like to love someone even when you try really hard not to. I know. But it doesn’t matter, none of it matters Marie. WCKD. The Maze. Janson. None of it matters, as long as I have you, okay? So here, these rings,” she shows Marie hers, “they are made form the same source, they may be two very different parts, but they are made from the same thing, they will always be connected, no matter if they change shape and become different things, they will always be a part of each other. You understand me Marie?”  
“I do,” she says looking at her, “I do Cleo.”  
“Nothing else matters as long as we have each other okay, so forget all the nonsense with the boys, forget it all, clean slate okay,” Cleo says.  
“I still think,” Ma starts. Cleo taps her head.  
“No thinking,” she says.  
“Girls we need to get moving,” Thomas yells across the sand at them.  
“Perfect timing,” Cleo says. Marie still looks at her like she could break down, she still feels the weight of all she said, but she knows Cleo does too, she knows the guilt Cleo feels each time she loses herself in her sadness, each time she risks danger because she can’t tell what is real. Marie does not agree with Cleo’s logic, but she understands it.  
Cleo really wants to ask Marie about Janson, about what happened with her, she cannot pin it down but there are just little things that seem different, seem off. Cleo is trying to write it off to guilt, to just a side effect of what happened, or her own breed of crazy. But she can’t help but worry. The way Marie is sticking to Thomas’s side, she can’t help but feel like something happened, something she isn’t talking about.

The ruins of the city come into view and they all look over the ruins. “It’s hard to think we could just forget,” Fry says.  
“We didn’t just forget, did we?” Cleo points out. She side eyes Teresa, who won’t stop fidgeting. “They were taken from us.”  
“Maybe not remembering isn’t so bad,” Teresa says.  
“Some of us might want to remember who we were before you took it away from us,” Winston says.  
“I don’t know if my opinion particularly matters, but remembering isn’t all it is cracked up to be,” Thomas says.  
“You don’t remember everything,” Marie reminds him.  
“I don’t think I want to, I’ve said it before, and I mean it, we aren’t those kids, we stopped being those kids the moment WCKD got involved,” Cleo says.  
“So, what does that mean for you Cleopatra Paige?” Winston asks.  
“Cleopatra Cooper,” Cleo says. “My name was Cleopatra Cooper. Janson told me.”  
“And you trust him?”  
“Not remotely, but truth or not, anything that distances me from Ava is a blessing.”

Moving through the city Cleo sticks close to the back of the group, keeping an eye on Winston who is struggling in the heat, keeping an eye on Marie who is walking with Minho, and keeping away from Newt, and all the things she doesn’t want to think about.  
“You look sad,” Winston tells her.  
“Don’t I always?” Cleo asks.  
“No, you used to just look fierce, all the time, more like nothing could touch you, I think we all thought that,” Winston says.  
“How the mighty have fallen,” Cleo says.  
“No, not at all” Winston stops to catch his breath. “It was like you weren’t real before, almost more of an idea than a person, only real to someone like Marie, or Newt. Even Alby,” Cleo winces at his name, “wasn’t always sure of you. We all respected you Cleo, but you weren’t like us, you were different, but now, it’s like you’re suddenly human.”  
“Thanks Winston,” Cleo says. “I think I needed to hear that.”  
“Stop!” Thomas yells. Everyone stands still and Cleo sees it, the shaking of the sand, even before she hears of whirring of the helicopter blades.  
“It’s WCKD,” Cleo says.  
“Everyone get out of sight,” Thomas says. Minho helps Marie to shelter under some rubble and the others duck under a collapsed ridge. Cleo can see Marie from her spot and she nods at her, but at this distance Ma doesn’t seem bothered by the disturbance, and her lack of concern although a pleasant surprise, feels uncharacteristic.  
“They aren’t going to stop looking for us, are they?” Newt asks.  
“No, they aren’t,” Cleo says. “The sooner we get to the mountains the better.”  
“Easier said than done,” Thomas says as the helicopters disappear into the distance. “We don’t even know where we are going exactly.”  
“I think it is safe to say, it’s in that direction,” Marie says pointing to the distance over the dune. They climb up the sand and see them in the distance, the mountains.  
“That’s quite a walk,” Teresa says. Cleo looks at the distance behind her.  
“Two days, at most,” Cleo says. “At this place anyway.”  
“How can you know that?” Teresa asks.  
“I spent years in The Glade, so days all I had to do was pace up and down that big green expanse, and trust me, I got a good sense of distance,” Cleo replies.  
“It’s always safe to assume Cleo is probably right,” Fry says.  
“Why?” Teresa asks.  
“Because I am rarely wrong,” Cleo says.  
“Can we not fight?” Thomas asks.  
“I am not fighting,” Teresa says.  
“You are being intentionally antagonistic,” Minho points out.  
“Big words,” Teresa starts.  
“You don’t want to pick that fight outsider,” Cleo warns. Winston who has been quiet this whole time, takes a step forward towards the mountain and simply collapses into the sand. The fighting stops and all the attention turns to Winston. Cleo checks his wound, which somehow looks worse than yesterday. “We can’t make him walk.”  
“I have an idea,” Thomas says as he disappears over the dune to collect some scrap to help them drag Winston through the sand.  
“He doesn’t look healthy, does he?” Ma asks Cleo.  
“I am not the med-jack,” Cleo points out.  
“I couldn’t help Chuck, I don’t really feel like much of a successful Med-jack right now,” Ma whispers. Cleo takes her hand with the hand she is wearing her ring on and she looks at her with all the softness Cleo can muster.  
“Chuck wasn’t your fault.”  
“But I couldn’t save him.”  
“Neither could I.”  
“You weren’t med-jack, I couldn’t save him, and I can’t help Winston, I’m worried we are going to-,”  
“Leave all the worrying to me, okay.”  
“I’ll try.”


	14. It's Like A Sting

It’s not too far across the sand before the stop. Cleo passes Marie some water from a bottle and Minho looks surprised. “Where did you?” he asks. She pulls a few different bottles from her bag.  
“They were unopened, and I know plastic goes bad but water does,” Cleo says passing Minho the bottle. “Just be sparring, I only found a few yesterday and I don’t exactly know how to collect rain water in the desert.”  
“Are you always prepared?” Minho jokes.  
“I am not prepared for anything these days Minho,” Cleo sighs. “Not a damn thing.”

A gunshot goes off and Cleo turns around to see Fry wrestling a gun out of Winston’s hand. “What the-,” Cleo pushes the two of them apart, confiscating the gun from them and placing it in Minho’s hand. “Want to explain why we are wasting bullets?”  
“He tried to,” Fry can’t complete the sentence but he doesn’t need to. Winston’s intentions are clear.  
“Winston, mate,” Newt says. Cleo eyes him with an anger that makes him realise perhaps he doesn’t really have a say in this conversation.  
“It’s spreading,” Winston says, lifting his shirt to show the state of the wound. He looks at Cleo. “You know it, I know it, I’m becoming one of them.”  
“It’s like a sting,” Cleo says. “It acts a little differently, but it ends the same.”  
“It ends worse,” Winston says. “We know it ends worse.”

Teresa stares across the sand and Marie and Thomas join her, while the others help Cleo who is desperately trying to make Winston comfortable while they discuss options. “You okay?” Marie asks.  
“I don’t think anyone has asked me that,” Teresa says.  
“Something happened to you too,” Ma says.  
“But they care what happens to you,” Teresa says.  
“Marie is family to them,” Thomas says, “without their memories they are all they know. And all they know besides that is you betrayed them, and you are the reason they don’t have memories.”  
“You did too,” Teresa points out. “And you have your memories back.”  
“I have some of them,” Thomas says. “And nothing that makes me understand.”  
“Give her a break,” Ma sighs, “we were all used by WCKD, Teresa too.”  
“What happened to you, when they took you?” Thomas asks.  
“I had some medical check-ups, they took a lot of blood, I wasn’t sure why, and then I was out for a while, when I woke up, it felt like waking up from a dream, until it didn’t, until it all started to come back so clearly,” Teresa says rubbing her neck.  
“Your memories?” Ma asks. Teresa nods.  
“Why would they give you your memories back?” Thomas asks.  
“They wanted me to remember why I was doing what I did,” Teresa says. “WCKD is Good, it was the only thing I was allowed to remember in The Maze. And now that’s what they wanted me to understand. What we were trying to do.”  
“You can’t believe that though,” Thomas says. “After what they put us through.”  
“I think we should go back” Teresa says, a little too honest.  
“You what?” Thomas asks.  
“They want to help us,” Teresa says. Marie is fiddling with something in her pocket, she doesn’t know what it is and she is scared to look, it is like something is holding her back, stopping her from checking. A cold feeling, deep in her chest, something stopping her from talking about it, she can barely even think about it. It scares her.  
“Maybe you don’t understand what we saw, but they don’t want to help us at all Teresa, we saw those kids strung up, not dead but they certainly weren’t living, you want that for us?” Thomas asks.  
“Guys?” Fry’s voice comes from afar. “You should come here.”

Cleo is sat next to Winston, talking to him quietly. “We can’t just leave him,” Fry says.  
“It’s what he wants,” Cleo says. She doesn’t turn, she keeps her eyes on Winston, keeps a gentle smile, she has a job to do. “We have to respect that.”  
“Winston we will find something,” Thomas starts.  
“You won’t,” Winston coughs, “because you can’t. This would be a nasty enough injury for Marie to fix up in The Glade, without the infection, but I can feel it, it’s spreading and it’s dark and it’s taking over and I don’t know how long before I become something I am not. And I don’t want that.”  
Without saying a word Newt reaches and takes the gun from Minho, and passes it to Winston, who takes it with the very little strength he has left. Ma moves like she is going to say something but Cleo cuts anyone’s chance to say it off. “That has one bullet,” Cleo says.  
“I’m a good shot,” he says. Cleo bites her lip in an attempt to not cry.  
“I don’t doubt that,” she says, trying to smile.  
“You don’t have to smile for me Cleo,” he says. “But I wouldn’t mind a favour.”  
“Go on,” Cleo says. He shifts, almost embarrassed, even on his deathbed.  
“Could you and Marie, sing for me, just once last time?” he asks. Cleo offers Ma her hand, and she takes it, joining her on the sand next to Winston.  
“Any requests?” Marie asks. He doesn’t respond.  
“Happy or sad?” Cleo asks.  
“Familiar,” he manages in a tired breath.  
“I had a dream about a burning house, you were stuck inside, I couldn't get you out,” Cleo starts quietly. Ma looks at her, surprised but going with it.  
“I lay beside you and pulled you close, and the two of us went up in smoke,” Ma continues. They can both feel the boys watching them, Teresa is just out of sight, pretending nothing can touch her. Maybe it can’t.  
“Love isn't all that it seems, I did you wrong, I'll stay here with you, until this dream is gone,” Cleo looks away from Winston for a moment, and everyone assumes it is her sadness, and it is, but it layers of sadness that they can’t see.  
“I've been sleepwalking, been wandering all night, trying to take what's lost and broke and make it right” Ma tries to get to her feet but she is unsteady, so Minho helps her up. Winston smiles at her, one last time.  
“I've been sleepwalking too close to the fire, but it's the only place that I can hold you tight. In this burning house,” Cleo just sits in the sand and sings until someone pulls her to her feet. She leans down to give Winston a kiss on the forehead and he smiles at her. "Goodbye," she whispers and starts to walk away.  
“I’m sorry,” Thomas says.  
“I know,” Winston says. “But we all did our best, we were just trying to survive Thomas, it’s what we do.”  
“Goodbye,” Thomas says.  
“Thomas,” Winston says as the others start to disappear from sight. “Take care of them.”  
“I will,” Thomas assures him.  
“Especially Ma and Cleo, they have each other and they are strong together, but they need it more than they will ever show.”  
“I know. I know.”  
The single gunshot rings across the sand as they make their way to the mountains and it catches in Ma’s throat, Cleo holds her up for a moment, so the others don’t notice. “I’ve got you,” Cleo says. For a snapshot of a moment Ma doesn’t look like herself at all, and then her eyes turn to Cleo and she is back.  
“You look worried,” Ma says.  
“I think I am losing my mind.”


	15. I Miss The Glade

They get so close to the mountains that it almost pains Cleo to stop and set up the fire but the day has not only been physically but emotionally draining, and as soon as Cleo sees the tiredness in Marie, she knows it is time to stop.   
“Lighting a fire in the desert is a lot more difficult than on the green, huh?” Minho says. Cleo looks up from the failing fire to Minho.   
“What gave that away?” Cleo asks.   
“Cleo,” Minho says.   
“Yes Minho?”   
“You are the Marie expert,” he says. Cleo laughs.  
“A few days ago, I would have agreed to that,” Cleo says. “These days, it is hard for me to claim I know anything, about anyone, yet again Ma.”  
“I just, I need to know something,” Minho says.   
“I can’t promise you I have the answer,” Cleo says.  
“Do you think I stand a chance?” Minho asks. Cleo sighs.  
“Minho… not only are there bigger issues, but I just don’t think she is overly thinking about that right now,” Cleo says.  
“Because of Newt?” he asks. Cleo moves with a tinge of anger and the dried wood sets alight.   
“No, Minho, because Ma… her priorities, her thoughts, she is too selfless,” Cleo says.  
“You sound mad, have I angered you?” Minho asks. Cleo sighs.  
“No Minho, you are being your… self. I just, I can’t talk about that kind of stuff, I just I am not qualified, I can’t do feelings, I’m not good at them, and they just end badly,” Cleo says.  
“I think you just don’t make the right choices,” Minho says.   
“Minho.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Now you’ve annoyed me.”  
“I am leaving.”  
“For the best.”

“You know what doesn’t make sense to me,” Fry says after a while.  
“The fact WCKD wanted us because we are supposedly immune?” Cleo asks.  
“And yet that happened to Winston,” Minho says.   
“We aren’t all immune,” Ma says. Cleo looks at her, and she is looking into the fire, so far away despite being so close.  
“I guess not,” Cleo says. But she knows that, a part of her knows that. She remembers there being immune and not immune labels on the files, she just can’t put labels to names, maybe she is scared to, scared to remember. But she can’t remember either way, by choice or not.  
“I never thought I would say this,” Fry says. “But I miss The Glade.”  
“I miss The Glade,” Cleo agrees.  
“It was your Kingdom,” Teresa says. “You aren’t in The Glade anymore, this isn’t your Kingdom, isn’t that what Janson said to you?”  
“More or less,” Cleo says. “But Janson didn’t understand anything. The Glade wasn’t home, but it wasn’t nothing either. It was the beginning.”  
“I always thought it would be the end,” Ma says. “I thought I would die in The Glade.”  
“You were always so positive,” Thomas says.   
“I didn’t say I thought everyone would, but you saw me, I couldn’t go through The Maze, not like Minho, I was never that brave.”  
“You are brave in other ways Marie,” Minho says.   
“Never brave like you, I will never be brave like you,” Ma says.  
“You don’t have to be,” Cleo says. “Leave all the dumb heroics to Minho, he can handle it.”  
“Like the guard,” Newt suggests. Ma almost springs to life at the memory.  
“What was that?” she asks. Minho looks happy for a moment, a quiet in the noise, a break from the sadness, as he just looks like a boy who likes a girl, who is noticing that he did something insane but kind of cool.   
“Just a casual takedown,” Minho says.   
“You were amazing,” Ma says. Cleo sees the light in Minho’s eyes and for a moment she forgets it all, the running, the death, the destruction, the distance gone and the distance yet to come.   
She looks out across the sand and she hears and sees nothing but open expanse. For a little while.   
“You forgive yourself yet?” Gally asks from the empty spot next to her, she tries to ignore him, looking at the others, looking at the fire. “Cleo, you can’t pretend I am not here.”  
“I know you aren’t,” Cleo whispers.   
“Do you forgive yourself yet?” he asks.   
“I don’t think I ever will.”


	16. Lightning

The fire is dying out and everyone is asleep except Thomas and Cleo. Cleo cannot sleep because every time she closes her eyes, she sees Gally, back at WCKD, shocked and dying. Thomas has something on his mind but Cleo isn’t bothered enough to pry about it.

“How much can you trust your memory?” Thomas asks Cleo after a while.

“I don’t even trust my eyes these days Tommy,” Cleo says. Thomas is looking at her, waiting. Cleo really doesn’t want to have the conversation so she gets to her feet and kicks the sand over the dying fire until it goes out. She walks a little while into the sand, watching the horizon. But Thomas doesn’t take the hint and joins her. “What memory is bothering you Thomas?”

“Something Teresa said, she said she thought we should go back, that maybe WCKD is Good,” he says. Cleo scoffs.

“I expect nothing from Teresa and yet she still disappoints me,” Cleo says.

“It just, it brought something back,” Thomas says. “After I found out about Marie, about them putting her in The Maze, I threatened to take on Ava, to do something to break down her plans, I don’t remember what but I remember it bothered Teresa. I remember she tried to defend them.”

_-Flashback-_

_“Thomas, we have to see it through, we just have to believe it will be worth it in the end.”_

_“Teresa, these are the bad guys, you have to see that.”_

_“I don’t see it, we aren’t bad, we are just trying to find a cure, how is that bad?”_

_“The things we are willing to do, it isn’t fair-,”_

_“Even if we are the bad guys,” Teresa says. “Screw it, someone has to be the bad guys, and if it saves the world, Thomas, let’s be the bad guys.”_

“But I,” Thomas says, “I didn’t want to be the bad guys, I just I wanted to protect Marie.”

“And you did what you could to do that,” Cleo says. “Thomas, don’t misunderstand me, I know that you would do whatever it takes to protect her, even then, even behind a screen, you were always protecting her.”

“Not enough,” he sighs.

“No matter what we do, we can’t save everyone,” Cleo says, “we just protect the ones we love and hope for the best.”

They stand looking out at the mountains for a while, both considering all they have left behind between where they were and where they are. “Do you really think we will get anywhere?” Cleo asks.

“Don’t you?” Thomas asks.

“I trust Aris, I trust his belief in it, I just don’t know if I have faith in humanity,” Cleo says. “Between Ava’s lack of remorse for what she has done, Janson’s attempts at deception, I don’t exactly have a good well to draw on for people wanting to help us.”

“We have each other, even if the Right Arm is a myth, even if there is nothing but WCKD, we aren’t WCKD,” he says.

“Not anymore,” Cleo says. She smiles at him, so he knows she is only teasing him.

“I was quite young when WCKD brought me in,” Thomas says, “I think, I can barely remember a month ago yet again years but, I was young. I didn’t know anything except fear and loss, and neither did Teresa. I don’t think she is bad Cleo, I need you to understand that.”

“I still don’t trust her,” Cleo says, “what she is willing to do, or was, I just… it’s not the type of person I trust.”

“I don’t trust her, that’s why I told you, that’s why I am talking to you, because we have our differences Cleo, but I think we have our similarities too, and I can’t tell anyone else, so I needed you to know, in case something happens,” Thomas says.

“Something like that?” Cleo asks.

“Something like…” he trails off.

“Earth to Thomas, something like what?” Cleo asks.

“Lights,” he says.

“Something like lights?” Cleo asks, deadpan.

“No Cleo, look, lights,” he says pointing to the distance.

“Wake the others,” Cleo says, turning back to the sleeping group. She sees the sky, the clouds, and she can feel it coming, the storm. “Wake them now.”

Walking through the sandy wasteland the world has become was already a task in the heat of the day, in the dark of the night it feels like a weight of the world that keeps piling on, so as the storm behind them starts to catch up, starts to threaten them with a game of catch no one agreed to, the running through the sand feels less and less like a victory and more like survival. When the first bolt of lightning hits the sand, the threat becomes very overwhelmingly real.

“You don’t think that will catch up with us, do you?” Teresa asks looking at the storm.

“Do you know how to ask intelligent questions?” Cleo yells back at her, “keep moving.”

They just run, through the storm, the lightning striking on occasion encouraging speed. Cleo grabs a handful of Aris’ hoodie as he nearly falls into the sand. He nods a thank you but they don’t stop running. Cleo can’t stop running, not until she gets there, until the practically falls into the building with the lights.

Cleo places a hand on the building structure desperate to catch her breath, Thomas is making sure Marie is okay, and the others are not far now. Minho turns and, in a moment too quick to really comprehend, the lightning strikes again, hitting something this time. Hitting Minho. “Minho,” Marie yells.

“Shit,” Cleo says as Newt and Thomas help carry Minho into the shelter.

“Minho? Minho” Marie says, trying to check him over as the boys lay him on the concrete flooring. “He’s not breathing,” Marie sounds panicked now, really panicked, yet she is holding herself with conviction. “Please be okay,” she whispers as she places her head to his chest trying to listen for a heartbeat. “That’s not good,” she says.

The others just watch, with a sense of helplessness and Marie starts to preform CPR. No one offers to help because no one knows how to, they just stay, frozen and concerned. “I can’t lose you too, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” Marie says, between breaths. Cleo can feel that, weighing on her soul. Minho is her oldest living friend. He arrived a few boxes before Gally, and for a while he was her only and best company, between Alby trying to build something resembling what The Glade became, and the rest of The Gladers not trying to understand her. Minho was her friend from the beginning, Minho was always kind and always offered to help. Minho never started fights but would always end them. Minho noticed when others were sad, he cared. The idea of losing him, especially now, it was out of question.

“Cleo, come here,” Marie instructs. It’s unlike her, the tone, the directness, but Cleo understands the situation at hand and just does what she instructs her to do.

“What do you need?” Cleo asks and Marie shows her.

“Please wake up,” Ma says, trying to remind his heart how to work, her face is almost blank of expression, until Minho starts to cough. “Minho?” she asks, relived as he takes a deep breath.

“What happened?” he asks opening his eyes to see Marie and Cleo staring down at him.

“You got struck by lightning,” Newt says, coming closer.

“I thought you were dead, your heart stopped,” Marie says panic flooding her body.

“It seems to be working now,” Minho says, trying to laugh it off.

“Don’t scare us like that you idiot,” Cleo says, shoving him as he tries to sit up.

“I didn’t think you cared Cleo,” Minho says laughter in his voice.

“I ran into The Maze for your lanky ass Minho, don’t forget that” Cleo points out. Marie is still holding Minho’s hand and smiling, he is trying to not to look and make it more obvious but the boy looks far too happy to have just been struck my lightning.

“Since when do you know CPR?” Thomas asks. Ma looks puzzled.

“I just knew,” she says. Minho chuckles.

“Not exactly how I imagined you kissing me would go but you did save my life,” he says. Ma starts to blush, a little confused.

“Minho,” she says softly.

“Guys, what’s that smell?” Teresa asks, fiddling with the torch. It lights up just in time to illuminate the face of a crank as it lunges at her. She screams but the chains around it hold it back, yet everyone is suddenly aware that in this dark shelter, there is more than one of them.

“What?” Cleo asks shining the light on the cranks, at least thirty, like the hoard that chased them down before, except all held at a certain distance with heavy chains. Cleo draws her bow, pointing it at the ones closest to her. She can feel the gun pressing into her stomach, safe and tucked inside her green all in one, but she doesn’t feel the need to retrieve it, not for this.

“You like our guard dogs?” comes a voice from the dark. The girl in the dark laughs as she makes her way through the hoard. “There is quite a few of you, isn’t there?”

“Who are you?” Cleo asks.

“Come this way and you’ll find out,” she says beckoning them to follow her. Cleo doesn’t move. “Unless you want to stay here with them?”

“I think I feel safer with them,” Cleo mumbles.

“Come on, Jorge wants to meet you, we haven’t seen anyone come out of The Scorch in such a long time, he is very eager.”


	17. Tagged

“Don’t pay them much attention, this way pretty boy,” Brenda tells Thomas as he looks like he might wander in the wrong direction, distracted by the large collection of men observing them all.  
“Pretty boy?” Marie mumbles.  
“He is a pretty boy,” Teresa says. Cleo fights the urge to push Teresa, but barely.   
“Why do I feel like we were safer in The Scorch?” Newt asks quietly.  
“Because we might have been,” Minho responds.   
There is crackle of chatter on the radio which disappears almost as soon as it is heard, the crowd clears to show a man sat at a desk, he turns to them, curious. “Hello,” he says, “I just have three questions for you, where did you come from, where are you headed and how can I profit?”   
“You just be Jorge,” Thomas says.   
“That I am,” he says and watches them all, waiting for an answer. “Don’t all answer at once.”  
“We are looking for the Right Arm, in the mountains,” Thomas says. Cleo is fiddling with the string on her bow, impatient and on edge. She doesn’t remember having so many eyes on her in a very long time, the closest she can recall was walking into the cafeteria and that didn’t end well.  
“Looking for ghosts, you mean,” Jorge says. “Why are you wasting your time?”  
“I don’t think we are wasting our time,” Aris says, to Cleo more than to anyone.  
“And where did you come from?” Jorge asks.  
“I don’t really think that is any of your business, Jorge,” Cleo says. Marie tugs on her arm like a warning, but Cleo isn’t listening.  
“Oh, a smart one,” Jorge says. “Let me ask you, where did you come from?”  
“I don’t know how much you know about biology, or what your beliefs are, so I don’t know how to answer that,” Cleo says. “But recently, we came from The Scorch.”  
“You like to be difficult, don’t you?” he asks her. “Check them,” he instructs the men. They start to grab each of them individually, a man about double Cleo’s size put’s a hand on Marie and she draws her bow, a warning.   
“Don’t touch her” she says. He laughs and in one quick movement scans Marie’s neck and steps back. Cleo moves forward to check Ma, and Brenda grabs the hand she is holding her bow in, and tilts Cleo’s head forward, scanning her neck. Cleo in a quick but not quick enough response, shoves Brenda off her. “Don’t touch me.”  
“Bad luck kiddos. You’re all tagged,” Jorge says. “You came from WCKD.”  
“Not her,” Brenda says, showing Jorge a blank scanner.   
“Who are you then?” Jorge asks. “To travel with such valuable cargo, you look like one of them, you act like one of them.”  
“What do you mean tagged?” Newt asks.  
“The things in your necks, that say you belong to WCKD,” Brenda says. “You for example, Subject A5.”  
“The Glue,” both Cleo and Teresa say at once, earning a look from the others.  
“What do you mean she doesn’t have a tag?” Teresa asks, suddenly very aware.  
“She has nothing, I scanned her, blank slate,” Brenda says.  
“That’s not possible,” Ma says. Cleo looks at her, even more confused, but Marie looks haunted and is staring at the floor, like she is trying to figure something out, something she isn’t talking about.  
“I was early,” Cleo says, “maybe they just didn’t have time.”  
“You weren’t that early, we were tagged on arrival, Cleo, you were the prototype, you should have a tag,” Teresa says.  
“I’m not sure I am comfortable with you having your memories back,” Cleo says.   
“I am not sure I’m comfortable with your attitude towards me,” Teresa tries.  
“Kids,” Jorge says, “I hate to interrupt a family dispute, but I have to say, you can’t answer my questions and you are much more valuable as a bargaining chip than as yourselves.”  
“Why does that sound threatening?” Minho whispers.  
“Because it is a threat,” Ma says, voice cold.  
“Not a threat, just the facts,” Jorge looks at Marie, and then at Cleo. “And some of you, are even more valuable than others.”  
“I don’t even have tag,” Cleo says.  
“No, but I knew I knew that face,” Jorge says. “You are the daughter of Ava Paige.”

“You know,” Teresa says as they hang suspended above a pit by some rope around their legs, “you could have been less of a smartass.”  
“You know,” Cleo retorts. “I should have let Gally shoot you.”  
“She doesn’t mean that,” Newt says tired.   
“Don’t I?” Cleo asks. Jorge walks in, alone and nonchalant.   
“Now, you guys, you are going to tell me everything you know about The Right Arm,” he says.   
“I thought they were ghosts?” Newt asks.  
“I happen to believe in ghosts,” Jorge says. “Fortunately for you.”  
“What makes you think exactly we are in a conversational mood?” Thomas asks. Jorge smiles.  
“You see, I saw you coming, and we watched, and if I have observed anything, you guys are like a family, with a few exceptions,” his glaze glances to Cleo and Marie, “an interesting family, maybe but family none the less, and family looks after each other. So, when I say some of you are much more valuable than others, which makes some of you… disposable, I believe you are willing to talk.”  
“Depends on who’s disposable,” Cleo says. Marie would kick her if she was capable in this moment. Jorge laughs.  
“I like you, you have bite, a sense of humour, I respect that, but I don’t have time for it,” Jorge says.   
“We don’t know much,” Thomas says. Jorge, tilts his head from side to side for a moment, and then pulls the lever that controls the rope holding them. They fall barely a few inches further into the pit, but it spooks Thomas. “Okay! They are in the mountains, they attacked Wicked, they got a few kids like us out of the other facilities, they seem to be on our side, that’s all we know.”  
“Hermano,” Jorge says with a tone of friendship but the look of control, “are you sure?”  
“That is all we know,” he repeats. Jorge looks them all up and down one more time before leaving.   
“I want my bow back in one piece asshole,” Cleo yells but he is already gone.

There is a prolonged silence in the dark. Before something occurs to one of them. “Cleo, do you still have it?” Ma asks, her tone almost entirely flat.  
“Did you see anyone take it off me?” Cleo responds with the same amount of cryptic nature.  
“No.”  
“Then I still have it,” Cleo responds. “It’s currently moved and wedged itself in my bra, much to my inconvenience.”   
“I think the bra issues aren’t just you,” Ma responds.  
“Girls, all the blood in my body is rushing to my head right now, and-” Cleo cuts Fry off.   
“I don’t want to know what you were going to say, so just stop talking,” Cleo says.   
“Can you get to it?” Marie asks. Cleo looks at her, she looks so calm, so calculating.   
“Yeah, why?” Cleo asks. Marie tries to swing herself closer to Cleo, and Cleo grabs her with one hand.   
“You won’t let me fall?” she asks Cleo. Cleo smiles, realising what she is planning.   
“Never,” Cleo says. “Hold onto me a moment,” Marie grabs a handful of Cleo’s clothing while Cleo unbuttons some of her all in one.   
“What are you doing?” Newt asks.   
“I have to untuck my,” Cleo untucks her grey undershirt, allowing her to retrieve the gun from her bra, “got it.” She takes Marie’s hand again with one hand, and passes her the gun with the other.  
“Don’t let me fall,” Marie says.   
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Cleo says, both hands now on the arm Marie isn’t holding the gun with. The sound of helicopters and Janson’s voice start to boom even through the pit.  
“Girls I don’t know what you are doing but do it fast,” Minho says.   
“On it,” Marie says, she pulls the trigger and the bullet slices right through the rope holding her. Cleo keeps a tight hold on her as the rope falls to the ground below. “You didn’t drop me.”  
“I told you I wouldn’t,” Cleo says, swinging Marie over to the floor. She lands with surprising elegance and starts to look at the control panel.   
“Brace,” Marie warns as the gives the rope enough slack to pull them over to safety.   
Cleo holds out her hand for the gun and Marie pauses for a moment, hesitant. “My gun,” Cleo says.   
“Of course,” Ma says handing it back. Cleo tucks it back under her shirt and adjusts her buttons.   
“How are you such a good shot?” Cleo asks. Ma looks puzzled for a moment, and then not at all.  
“Luck I guess,” she says as she helps the others detangle from the rope. But something isn’t sitting right with Cleo, maybe the use of a bullet from the gun, maybe the effortlessness of the escape, maybe the way Marie looked at the gun before giving it back to her. Something is bothering her.


	18. I Have An Idea

Janson looks down at the building from his place in the helicopter. “Come on, we don’t want to cause issues, from no fault of your own, you have come into possession of W.C.K.D property, it is incredibly valuable to us, and we would like it returned promptly,” Janson says through his speaker. “If you help us, we will be very grateful and I am sure we can provide you with compensation for this inconvenience… however if you are caught trying to keep us from our property, we will not hesitate to take strong action.”

Cleo looks to the high ceiling, trying to understand how Janson is projecting his irritating voice so far across the expanse of this place. “We need to get out of here, and fast,” Marie says.

“I wonder if I get my bow back,” Cleo says.

“You have a gun,” Marie reminds her. But it hits Cleo like a rock in the chest.

“Ma, you know what that bow means, and” Cleo places a hand over her stomach, where the gun has returned to jabbing her under her shirt, “I don’t want to use this unless I need to.” She way Marie doesn’t respond, or seem to understand that, deeply worries Cleo, Marie has always understood her, no matter how strange it seemed. Her not understanding this, of all things, doesn’t feel like Marie at all. Cleo grabs Ma’s arm and pulls her aside while the others try to figure out a plan. “Ma, I need you to talk to me right now.”

“Why?” she asks. Cleo just looks at her, like she doesn’t recognise her. Her expression softens and she blinks like waking up from a dream.

“What happened to you?” Cleo asks. “With Janson, what did they do, you seem…”

“Different?” Ma asks. “I feel different, like I am missing something, I feel strange Cleo, it scares me.”

“Hey,” Cleo softens again, seeing her best friend scared in front of her. “I am here, I will do whatever it takes to help you, always.”

“I just,” Ma looks almost like she might cry. “I don’t feel like myself.”

“That’s okay,” Cleo pulls her into a hug, “I shouldn’t expect you too, we have been through so much, you most of all.”

“Me most of all?” Ma asks. “What about you?”

“I was built for pain,” Cleo says trying to shrug it off with a laugh and a smile. Ma just looks sad.

“I really wish you didn’t feel that way,” she sighs. “I wish you could just take your chances and be happy.”

“We don’t have time to discuss that right now,” Cleo says, realising what she means and trying to not look to Newt.

“Do we ever?” she asks. “There is never a right time for anything Cleo, you should know that by now. We just have no, why can’t you just choose to be happy for what little time we could have, nothing-,”

“Where do you think you are going?” Barkley, one of the men from before, asks, gun pointed at Thomas. Cleo moves in front of Marie on instinct, watching Barkley carefully despite being much further from the danger than the others.

“We are leaving, we didn’t mean to cause trouble,” Aris says.

“Oh no, no you aren’t,” Barkley says. “We are going to give you back to W.C.K.D, they want you badly, you are so very valuable.”

“Catch,” comes a voice from behind Barkley. Cleo moves forward and catches her bow as Brenda throws it to her. Barkley turns to see Brenda and she knocks him out cold with the hilt of her gun. 

“Thank you,” Thomas says.

“You’re welcome pretty boy,” Brenda says. Brenda looks at Cleo. “Can you actually shoot that thing?”

“Yes, I can,” Cleo says.

“Good, come on, Jorge needs us to move fast,” Brenda says.

They meet Jorge on the higher level, he has collected together everything he needs into a bag and is getting ready to run. “What’s happening?” Minho asks.

“We are getting you out,” Brenda says, “as dumb as that is.”

“Why?” Thomas asks.

“I will help you get to The Right Arm, but you will owe me a favour, do you understand that kid?” Jorge asks, eyes on Thomas.

“I get that,” he confirms.

“Good,” Jorge says. “Now let’s play that Janson my favourite song.” He places a record on the player and the music starts. He looks at them with a smile filled with both childlike joy and slight mania. “Follow me.”

Jorge guides them through until they reach what looks like a zipline. Marie immediately starts to look unsettled. “We are going to go down there and around, we should get out with ease but I will need you to listen to me, start getting fastened in, I think we just have enough,” Jorge instructs. Brenda helps Aris and he is the first to go, followed by Teresa. Both Thomas and Minho are reluctant to try as Marie looks so unsettled. Cleo helps clip her in but she grips onto her arm.

“You ready, muscles?” Brenda asks Minho. Minho smiles a little to himself but turns to Cleo and Marie, looking for encouragement or permission or both.

“Minho, you go first,” Cleo tells him. He listens and does. “Look, I am here, and Minho is waiting on the other side, you will be fine.”

“I don’t,” Marie starts, she looks like she is fighting with herself, stuck halfway between panic attack and complete acceptance of the situation.

“Don’t you trust me?” Cleo tries, as Frypan makes the jump.

“More than anything,” Marie says, but her breathing starts to quicken. Cleo looks at her, unsettled and scared and she doesn’t know what to do. She can’t fix it.

“Cleo, should I?” Newt starts.

“Just go, we don’t have time,” Cleo says.

“I don’t want to leave you both,” Newt says. Cleo takes her spare hand to shove the rope he is attached to and wanting to or not Newt makes the jump. Marie looks even more alarmed.

“I won’t do that to you,” Cleo tries to reassure her. “I promise.” When she doesn’t look anymore calmed Cleo throws a look to Thomas. “I don’t know what to do, if she keeps breathing like that she might pass out.”

“You just need to get her to calm down,” Brenda says.

“Look I know you are trying your best,” Cleo says, “but you don’t know her, you don’t know us, don’t try and talk to me.”

“Cleo, don’t, fight,” Marie says. She looks like she is torn in two and it scares Cleo, scares Cleo more than she can explain.

“Someone needs to say something helpful and they need to say it now,” Cleo says.

“I have an idea,” Thomas says and he kisses her. Both Brenda and Cleo look at him with a shock that isn’t quantifiable. Marie’s breathing calms and when he pulls away, she looks calm, almost too calm considering. Cleo is one word shy of grabbing him by the scruff for the audacity, but it works. Marie doesn't seem to react at all.

“Thomas,” she says quietly.

“Go,” he whispers. 

“Make sure he makes it out,” Marie says, eyes on Cleo.

“Of course,” Cleo says.

“Meet you on the ground,” Marie says before disappearing into the outside. She lands basically directly into Minho, who watched the whole thing at a distance, they all did. Minho holds Marie until she finds her legs again, and she smiles at him before turning to watch for the others.

Cleo tries to help Thomas get ready for the jump, but she can’t ignore his smile. “You really thought that was the only option?” Cleo asks.

“It worked,” Thomas says.

“We are going to be having words about your intentions with my Marie, Thomas,” Cleo says.

“Shit,” Brenda says and runs back into the previous room.

“Where the hell is she going?” Thomas asks, discarding the rope and chasing after her.

“Thomas!” Cleo yells after him. She is alone on the platform, everyone else safe with Marie. She wants to just make the jump, but she made a promise to Marie, so against her best judgment, she follows them both back.

Janson, who has noticed them attempting to make an escape is yelling through his speaker, vague threats and warnings but no one is really listening anymore.

“Where did they go?” Newt asks, when Cleo and Thomas disappear from sight.

“We have to move,” Jorge says. “Now.”

“We can’t leave them,” Newt says.

“We have to,” Marie says, hand on Minho’s arm.

“What?” Newt asks, confused.

“Brenda can take care of herself, she will meet us with your friends, but trust me, we need to move,” Jorge says, helping them along.

“Marie, Thomas and Cleo, alone, together, that’s a recipe for disaster, we can’t just leave them,” Newt says. Marie looks at him with a soft smile but cold eyes.

“They will make it back to us,” she says.

“How can you be sure?” Newt asks as they make their way through the dark.

Her expression changes to one of worry, she wants to fight it, to turn back, but her feet keep moving, one in front of the other. “They just have to, they have to.”

“What the hell?” Cleo demands following Thomas and Brenda through the building.

“She forgot something,” Thomas says.

“What did she forget, her common bloody sense?” Cleo asks. Brenda pulls a draw open and grabs something from it, throwing it in her pocket.

“Got it,” she says, like a victory neither Thomas or Cleo understand.

“Can we get back to Marie now?” Cleo asks.

“We can’t go back that way,” Brenda says.

“Why the hell not?” Cleo demands. Brenda starts to run in the opposite direction, pointing to the way the came. Cleo looks over her shoulder and she sees them, W.C.K.D personnel with guns. “Valid reason.” She nods to Thomas to follow Brenda. “We need to keep moving.”

“Agreed,” Thomas says as they run to catch up with Brenda. Cleo turns to shoot an arrow at one of her pursuers, it strikes them in the shoulder and they fall to the floor.

“You are a decent shot,” Brenda calls back to her.

“I made this bow and these arrows with my own two hands,” Cleo says climbing over a broken door, “you’d bloody hope I was a good shot.”

More W.C.K.D guards start to follow them and Brenda takes a sharp left over some very thin metal scaffolding. “Tight rope?” Cleo asks.

“Just be quick,” Brenda says. “The song is almost over.”

“What happens when the song is over?” Thomas asks.

“Don’t ask questions like that, Tommy,” Cleo says.

“You are about to find out,” Brenda says, pulling Thomas along as Cleo almost overtakes her.

One of the guards goes to shoot at Cleo, but the other pushes the taser gun down, reminding him off the fall and the value of these subjects. Cleo missteps and falls onto the metal bar, hitting her head hard, but not falling to the ground far below. Her vision blurs. She starts to lose herself in a memory, a memory of falling. Thomas pulls her to her feet and back into her senses, just in time for Brenda to pull them both into a lift shaft.

“Brace,” she yells at them. Thomas looks confused.

“Why would I-,” the building explodes in perfect detonation, the floors collapsing in on themselves, and everything falling into the flames.

The others watch the explosion from a distance, Marie hides her face in Minho’s chest to shield from the light, Minho places an arm around her, as if to shelter her from the explosion. “How did they get out of that?” Aris asks.

“Did they get out of that?” Teresa asks.

“We have to keep moving,” Jorge says.

“That’s our friends in there, that’s your… we have to keep moving?” Newt asks, angry.

“Kid, if they made it out in time, which I believe they did, Brenda will take them where we were headed, we can’t do anything now except keep moving.”

“We could have done something back there,” Newt says.

“We would have put more of us at risk” Marie says. Newt looks at her, with the same unrecognition Cleo has looked at her with. Marie doesn’t sound like Marie. “It’s Cleo,” she says, voice shaking now, “and Thomas, they are almost invincible right?”

“Yeah,” Minho says, holding her tighter, trying to reassure himself as much as her. “They are fine. I’m sure of it.”

_-Flashback-_

_“Where is Cleo?” Gally asks Alby. Alby points to Cleo who is even within hearing range, but Gally somehow missed her. She is talking to someone, but she is listening to Gally and Alby more than paying attention to what she is doing._

_“She’s on Greenie duty,” Alby explains._

_“She hates Greenie duty,” Gally says._

_“You wouldn’t know that to look at her, not today,” Alby laughs. “You should have been there today, she lit up, haven’t seen her so spritely in a while.”_

_“Why?” Gally asks._

_“Beats me, but you should introduce yourself,” Alby says almost pushing him over to Cleo and the greenie._

_“Cleo,” Gally says with a smile._

_“Gally, this is the greenie,” Cleo says, gesturing to a tall, slender boy, with blonde hair and soft brown eyes._

_“Hi,” Gally says arms crossed._

_“This is Gally, he is a builder, and a grump,” Cleo teases. He smiles at Gally offering his hand for him to shake, Gally looks surprised. But he sees Cleo smiling, the way she smiles at him, the greenie, and Cleo notices him watching her and stops._

“Cleo,” Thomas shakes Cleo. “You okay?”

“Newt,” Cleo mumbles. Thomas shakes his head.

“No, Thomas,” he says. She groans and tries to push him, noticing the injury to her arm from the fall in the process.

“I know that idiot,” she mumbles.

“Whose Newt,” Brenda asks, inspecting the walls. “The one with the muscles.”

“No, that’s Minho,” Thomas says.

“Okay pretty boy, which one then?” Brenda asks.

“None of your damn business,” Cleo says adjusting to her surroundings. “You need to stop it with the names, and you need to explain to me, why the hell we are trapped at the bottom of a lift shaft, and how the actual hell we get back to Marie.”

“I’ll find a way, okay, calm down, princess,” Brenda says.

“You better,” Cleo warns her, “and the names Cleo, and I am no princess.”

“This way,” Brenda says pointing to a narrow tunnelway.

“If you get us killed,” she points to Brenda, “and if you following her gets me killed,” she points to Thomas. “I will shoot you both, no hesitation.”

“Good to know,” Brenda says leading the way.

Cleo tries to clean herself of the dirt and dust from the explosion. But it seems to want to stick to her skin almost as much as Gally’s blood. She stares at her hands, without Marie, without her anchor, she won’t know what is real and what isn’t, and that terrifies her. Especially with her memories creeping into her thoughts more and more each day. Like puzzle pieces she doesn’t have an outline for yet. Like painful reminders of the mistakes she has made along the way. Like a gentle jab at the idea that no matter what had happened, she was always destined to lose Newt and let Gally down, and maybe somewhere along the way hurt Marie as well. Like she was built to destroy the people she cares for, and that thought drags her further into the dark.


	19. Rat

“You kissed her,” Cleo says for what must be the tenth time. “You actually kissed her.”

“He kissed her,” Minho says to Newt, watching Marie walk only just in front. “He actually kissed her.” Newt doesn’t really know what to say, a little more occupied with the concerns of their current wellbeing over the events that occurred before the explosion.

Marie is spinning. She can barely piece together what happened between being strung up and ending up separated from Cleo and Thomas, there are only a few things she knows for sure. One, Cleo isn’t with her, and that worries her, as much as she wants to believe in Cleo’s ability to stay alive, she knows how bad Cleo is with her control, especially now, with all her difficulties, and Thomas isn’t any better. The two of them ran into The Maze without a thought, and Cleo doesn’t have Gally to save her from herself this time. Two, she can’t get to her, she just has to hope that they will find each other where they are headed and nothing she can say or do can change that. Three, Thomas kissed her. She doesn’t understand why or exactly what happened, she was lost in her panic and then he kissed her. He actually kissed her, and no amount of rational thinking is making it make sense. Then she remembers walking, with Minho. The stress, the confusion, makes it all so blurry, so confusing. She just doesn’t understand how she jumped without Cleo, or how she jumped at all. And four, arguably the most confusing, she is keeping relatively calm in spite of it all, and she is continuously drawn back to Minho’s side. She knows what it is like to be drawn to people, she experienced it with Newt and with Cleo but this is different, strange, and she can’t figure it out.

“He likes her, everyone knows that,” Newt says.

“I just had my moment did he really have to kiss her?” Minho says.

“Would you have done any different?” Newt asks. Minho says nothing.

“Ma,” Minho calls after a moment, she looks back at him. “Are you doing okay?”

“I don’t know,” Ma says, tugging at her sleeves, pulling them over her hands as she slows to walk with Minho.

“You had a panic attack,” Newt says.

“Is that what happened,” Ma says.

“You don’t remember?” Newt asks.

“It’s fuzzy,” Ma says. “It’s probably the stress.”

“Probably,” Newt agrees.

“Good thing Thomas was there to save the day,” Minho says.

“He stopped my breathing getting out of hand, I was hyperventilating,” Ma whispers to herself making sense of it.

“That’s all it was?” Minho asks.

“Like the CPR,” Newt says. Minho glares at him but Marie doesn’t notice.

“Stopped my breathing long enough to get it under control,” Ma says, “medically that makes sense.” But to her it still feels like she is missing something. When he kissed her, she lost herself in the moment, she was so surprised that it was like she disappeared somewhere, like she ceased to be herself. So overwhelmed, so surprised. “That makes sense,” she says.

“You say it like there wouldn’t be another reason for him to kiss you,” Minho says a little defensively.

“There isn’t,” Ma says. Newt goes to stop Minho but he says it before he thinks, before Newt can stop him.

“Except that he has feelings for you.”

Marie stares at Minho, lips slightly parted, eyes wide. “He… what?”

“Are you sure we are going the right way?” Cleo asks, trying to fix the snap in her bow from the fall.

“Are you sure you didn’t hit your head too hard?” Brenda responds. “I know this place. These tunnels, they should lead out. Are only issues are,” she pauses at the sounds, almost like growling coming from beneath them, “is anything we encounter down here, will be full term.”

“The cranks,” Thomas says. Brenda nods.

“Point to the pretty boy,” she says.

“Look,” Cleo says overtaking Thomas to stand next to Brenda. “I know you mean no harm, but you need to stop.”

“You jealous?” she asks, looking her up and down.

“No,” Cleo says. “Thomas isn’t my type.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Brenda says, smirking. This quietens Cleo for just a moment. “Have I touched on a nerve?”

“You aren’t my type either,” Cleo says. Brenda laughs.

“You don’t sound so sure,” she says. Cleo huffs.

“Look, just listen to me okay, you need to back off, Thomas, Minho, you need to back down,” Cleo says, “paws off.”

“I’m joking mostly but you seem to take it to heart,” she says.

“Not on my behalf,” Cleo says.

“What about the blonde?” she asks.

“You stay far away from Newt,” Cleo says. Brenda looks her up and down.

“That ones for you, at least a little bit,” she says.

“Newt is… out of bounds, they all are,” Cleo says.

“Because of your friend?” Brenda asks. “She didn’t seem so fierce to me. I could probably take her.”

“You’d have to go through me first,” Cleo says. Brenda nods.

“I think I could do that too,” Brenda responds. Thomas sensing tension but not listening in, speeds up to join them both.

“So is Jorge your father?” he asks.

“Might as well be, he is what I have for family,” Brenda says. “He has always looked after me. Since I was little.”

“Where are we going?” Cleo asks.

“Well, princess,” Brenda says. “Jorge will be heading to find Marcus, so once we get out, that’s where we go too.”

“Who is Marcus?” Thomas asks. Brenda looks sad for a moment but it passes quickly.

“A guy who knows a little about The Right Arm, he can help us,” Brenda says.

“How do you know that?” Cleo asks.

“You really don’t trust anything, do you?” she asks.

“I have enough reason to not,” Cleo says. “And you did tie us up and threaten us.”

“We saved your asses too, don’t forget that, including your precious Mary,” Brenda says.

“Her name is Marie,” Cleo says.

“Okay,” Brenda responds unbothered.

“You put us in danger to begin with,” Cleo says.

“We aren’t perfect people,” Brenda says. “We are just trying to survive okay? And you are our best bet.”

“So, you are using us?” Cleo asks. Brenda turns to her, stopping in her steps to lean over her. Brenda isn’t tall but almost anyone is tall next to Cleo.

“Isn’t that what you are doing with us, using us to get to The Right Arm, to escape Wicked, to save your friends, don’t pretend anyone does anything these days out of the goodness in their hearts, princess, everyone is just looking out for themselves,” Brenda says.

“I don’t believe that,” Thomas says. “I believe there are still good people.”

“I only have a few years of memories, like a week of memories outside of The Glade and even I doubt that,” Cleo says.

“Marie would agree with me,” Thomas says. Cleo scowls at him.

“That’s a low blow,” Cleo says, moving to walk in front of them.

“You don’t know where you are going princess,” Brenda calls after her.

“Forward seems sensible.”

“What?” Marie repeats, she looks like a deer caught in a trap, so surprised, so confused. Newt glares at Minho, but Minho doesn’t look particularly bothered.

“He should have told her by now, I thought he had,” Minho says.

“Thomas isn’t capable of telling her that,” Newt says.

“Well, he should have,” Minho says. “For reasons like now, there’s no point hiding it, when we don’t know what happens next, we don’t know what’s going to happen out here and just lying about…” Minho stops talking once he realises how Marie is looking, she looks worried, she looks sad. He realises very quickly that maybe what he said about Thomas is applicable to more than one situation, that suggesting things aren’t guaranteed really isn’t what she needs to hear right now. “Marie I’m sorry,” he starts, she hugs him, like she is trying to hide. He holds her. Newt shakes his head at Minho.

“You’re supposed to be better than the rest of us,” Newt mouths to Minho.

“I didn’t mean to upset her, I don’t want to upset her,” Minho mouths back.

“Well, we have all screwed that one, haven’t we?”

Marie is spinning, spinning in her own head to such a degree that she feels lost from herself again. She doesn’t understand what has happened and she feels almost unreal. Like she has been tucked away within herself, and she doesn’t know how to get back.

Marie looks at Minho and Minho doesn’t notice but she has a determination in her eyes that wasn’t there a moment ago. She takes Minho’s hand and Minho is surprised, confused but not questioning of it. His heart un-sinking from the place it fell when he saw Thomas kiss her, the moment he thought it was over for him, because as much as he cared for Marie, he understood what Cleo had meant and he agreed. Minho would rather cease to exist, than to bring Marie any kind of pain. She deserved to be loved, just like that.

“Can we speed up, a little bit?” Cleo asks.

“You are injured, and we don’t know where we are going,” Thomas says.

“I have a rough idea,” Brenda defends.

“I’m not injured,” Cleo says. Thomas taps her arm and she winces. “Firstly, screw you, secondly, it’s barely a scratch.”

“So, she’s a tough one,” Brenda teases.

“What is your problem?” Cleo asks.

“My problem?” Brenda asks. “I have seen you with the other girl, I think it’s your problem,” Brenda says.

“Teresa deserves all she gets, she’s earned it,” Cleo says.

“Would be nice if you tried not to fight with her,” Thomas says.

“You know what she did, you actually remember it, don’t act like I am unjustified,” Cleo says.

“You can’t blame her entirely, she was just a kid too,” Thomas says. “She only had your mother for guidance.”

“So did I,” Cleo says. Thomas shakes his head.

“No, you didn’t,” he says. Cleo eyes him.

“Why do I feel you are still keeping things from me?” Cleo asks.

“Because maybe I am,” Thomas admits.

“So you don’t have memories, and Wicked did that to you,” Brenda checks.

“Yeah, took our memories, threw children into a Maze and just watched if they’d survive,” Cleo says.

“Something to do with high stress and endurance making us more valuable,” Thomas mumbles.

“That’s twisted,” Brenda says, looking even more worried.

“You knew that,” Cleo says.

“I haven’t heard it from someone who actually went through it though,” she says. Cleo looks at Brenda, really looks at her for the first time. She can’t be far off their age, which means she was perfectly probable to be the kind of child Wicked would have collected. Especially without parents.

“You lost your parents and Jorge looked after you,” Cleo says. “You are lucky Wicked didn’t come for you.”

“You could say that,” she says, but she doesn’t sound convincing. “But have you considered there are worse fates than some Maze?”

“Have you considered how many of my friends I watched die in that Maze?” Cleo asks.

“How many people I watched die out here,” Brenda says. For a moment they look at each other and they understand each other. The moment passes.

“We need to pick up the pace, I am worried about Marie,” Cleo says.

“So am I,” Thomas says.

“I am worried about Marie partially because of you,” Cleo says. “She’s already confused enough, and then you kissed her, she won’t know what to do with that.”

“She knows that…” Thomas trails off. “She doesn’t, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t remember and I’ve never said because I didn’t want to… does she even have an idea?”

“You aren’t subtle,” Cleo says, “but Marie, she would have a hard time believing of her own accord, she needs it to pretty much hit her in the face.”

“Smart one,” Brenda jokes.

“Ma is more intelligent than you can imagine, she just… has a lot of feelings,” Cleo says.

“And you don’t?” Brenda asks.

“I try not to,” Cleo says.

“How has that worked out for you?” Brenda asks.

“It hasn’t,” Cleo says, thinking about Newt, the way he didn’t want to jump without them. The way he was worried. The way he wanted to help. Cleo trying to bury her feelings is only pushing more to the surface. Something she used to pretend wasn’t there is now overwhelming her. But she knows now, she knows Marie and she knows Newt, and if Newt is what could make Marie happy, and she knows he could. That is what she deserves, whatever she says. Because Cleo knows Marie is wrong about one, big, simple, thing. Newt could love Marie so easily, without even trying, and on some level, Cleo thinks he already does.

They take a few more tunnels and a light starts to seep in, Cleo walks towards it only to find both Thomas and Brenda looking elsewhere. “Guys, Marie, moving, pace,” Cleo says.

“Is Marie your girlfriend or something, because I thought I was to back off on Marie’s account, but now I can’t even tell,” Brenda says.

“No,” Cleo says, walking to her, “Marie isn’t my girlfriend, she is my everything.”

“Romantic,” Brenda says, pointing the torch at the wall. Cleo see’s what they see, the veins growing up and around the rock, the way they stretch and weave, it is almost like breathing.

“That’s creepy,” Cleo says. “We should go.”

She just watches as Brenda walks further into the tunnel covered in breathing black veins and she just stares at her, stunned. “I just want to look,” Brenda says.

“I wouldn’t advise that,” Cleo says.

“You don’t own me,” Brenda responds.

“I also promise I won’t endanger myself to save you if you get yourself in trouble,” Cleo says, “I won’t die for you.”

“I am glad we understand each other,” Brenda says walking further in. Cleo looks at Thomas, a little exasperated.

“You are going to follow her, aren’t you?” Cleo asks.

“Yeah,” he admits. “And you are going to put yourself in danger for me, aren’t you?”

“Apparently,” Cleo says sighing and walking into the tunnel.

Marie sticks close to Minho, not leaving his side, and seems to almost completely ignore Newt’s existence. Newt is torn between watching her to try and understand what he missed, what happened between then and now that has caused this, and worrying that Thomas and Cleo didn’t make it out. He believes that Cleo and Thomas are on their way to meet them, he has to, he believes it with the same determination he wanted to believe they were safe with Janson, the belief that isn’t promised, the belief that is faulty and standing on grounds of desperation over honest understanding. But it is standing. He tries to write of Marie’s behaviour as her still coping with what she said, which Newt himself is still reeling from, so he understands. But it is never like Marie to be cold, even when she is avoiding conflict or when she is sad or angry, she is never… like this. It is like she shut down, which is the least Marie thing Newt can think of. Newt can’t comprehend what it is like to be her right now, he knows that. It is one thing to be told she cares for him, it is another thing for a cruel set of circumstances to force her into saying it. Especially paired with the way she outed Cleo and her feelings, making it almost fall second in his priorities, which wasn’t fair. He never got the chance to really talk to Marie about it, he doesn’t even know where to begin. Marie is his best friend, Marie is the girl who always knows what to say, always there, always kind, always exactly what he needed her to be. And he doesn’t even know how to begin to talk to her about what happened, because so much happened. And he knows, she doesn’t know how to talk about it either. So, no one says anything.

Brenda jumps at a rat running along some piping. Cleo looks at her, like she’s a child and Brenda just glares back. The rat, skinny and moving in a strange manner, looks almost threatening as it runs scared from something. “Does that look right to you?” Cleo asks.

“It’s a mammal,” Brenda says. Cleo looks at her, blank of expression.

“Right no memories,” Brenda says. “The Flare didn’t just mess with the human DNA, like they thought at first, it was slower but it changed all mammals, any could get infected.”

“So, if that bites us?” Thomas asks. Brenda shakes her head.

“It’s not passable through different species, but it effects all mammals, but it that rat took a bite, it would hurt like a bitch, but it wouldn’t turn you, probably give you rabies or something though,” Brenda says.

“Don’t touch the rat, noted,” Cleo says. Thomas is using the torch light to follow the rat’s path and suddenly something moves from the wall and grabs the rat. A crank, almost entirely wrapped in the black veins bites the rat clean in half. Cleo reaches immediately for her bow but without having the material to fix the splintering it is useless to her now. Brenda and Thomas are just staring. “Guys,” Cleo says as more of the cranks start to pull away from the wall, out of tubes in the wall, and from down quiet dark tunnels, moving towards them. “We don’t want to watch them get closer, we want to run.” Cleo grabs Thomas’s collar. “Now.”

They start running back the way they came as fast as they can and Cleo is quickly reminded why she hates running and why she was never built to be a runner for The Glade, and dragging Thomas and Brenda along beside her, she can’t help but recall Newt saying how Thomas had seemed to be runner material until he faceplanted the dirt. “That’s what you meant by full term?” Thomas asks.

“I would focus on running, not chit chat,” Cleo says as they near the light. She sees the edge before they do and she stops, holding both their hands and yanking them back. Thomas stumbles but a footstep from the edge he realises what Cleo did. “How many times have I had to save your life now greenie?” Cleo asks.

“Why do you call me that when your mad?” Thomas asks as Cleo starts to look for a way to climb.

“Because it reminds you that I have years on you, memories or not, I was surviving in The Glade, while you were at Wicked,” Cleo says. Brenda pulls Cleo’s arm and they start to climb up the rubble of the collapsed building. Weaving through the rock and warped floors as they try to keep a distance between themselves at the cranks following them.

“You worked with them?” Brenda asks as they climb.

“We have a long-complicated history Brenda,” Cleo says.

“Watch out,” Brenda says as some metal slides past her and down the slope, hitting a crank on the way and shattering the glass window beneath them.

“Thanks,” Cleo says. Brenda smiles just a little bit.

“No worries princess,” she says.

They clamber up and over more and more broken wall and glass and through a gap in some stone, the building shifts. “When did this place collapse?” Cleo asks.

“A long time ago, it’s never been structurally sound, not since The Flare,” Brenda says.

“I don’t think the explosion would have helped,” Thomas says.

“Thomas, just keep up,” Brenda says. She jumps over a broken handrail with ease but as she reaches for her next support the metal snaps and she falls back onto a doorway. The door opens unable to support the impact and she falls straight through, quite a distance onto a glass window, the ones hovering over the giant fall to the ground below.

“Brenda,” Cleo and Thomas say at once.

“You okay?” Thomas asks. She stirs, dazed.

“I’m okay” she replies. Cleo looks around, trying to figure out how to get down to her.

“We are finding a way down,” Cleo calls down to her. Thomas looks surprised.

“Thought you said-,”

“Look, we need her, I don’t know how to get to Marie without her,” Cleo says, but she is kind of lying. She doesn’t know how to get to Marie without her, that’s true, but that wouldn’t stop her finding Marie, she would move Heaven and Earth to get back to Marie. But she also doesn’t want to leave Brenda behind. Brenda looks at the long fall beneath her and tries to move but the glass starts to crack. “Don’t move,” Cleo instructs. “We are coming down for you, don’t move Brenda.”

Thomas, holding onto the door, tries to slowly climb down to her, the steep wall giving nothing to really grip onto. Cleo hovers in the doorway, trying to figure out something less dangerous with the little time they have. Thomas slides down the wall, offering his hand for Brenda to take and she reaches for it. But the crank that has not stopped pursuing them since the tunnels crashes through the gap by Cleo, and out of pure instinct she kick it back, it falls into the wall and lunges back at her, only to miss and fall through the doorway landing on the glass next to Brenda.

“Shit,” Brenda says as the crank lunges at her, Cleo pulls for her bow but is reminded of its uselessness. She looks down at Thomas trying to find something to fight the creature off with, at Brenda trying to push the creature off her.

She reaches for the door handle, but she knows she is going to miss it, what she tries to tell herself is an attempt to jump, she knows is just her accepting the fact she is about to fall.

_She is climbing a tree in The Glade, the sun is so warm and she is just trying to clear her head, just trying to make sense of all the things that don’t make sense, the tree is old, it isn’t the tallest in The Glade, not the wisest or the most challenging, it is just the tree she chose to climb._

_She is slowly climbing the stairs in a corridor, she hates these stairs, they seem to go on forever, they are so long and steep and boring, and the railing is rusted and having to climb them seems unfair._

_She is over confident, she puts her foot on a branch without testing it._

_She is tired, she doesn’t look where she is going, she doesn’t hold the rail for fear of being covered in rust, how Cleo hates the ash like texture of crumbled rust in her hands._

_So she falls._

_So she falls._

_But Newt is there, and he catches her, he pulls her to the lower branch he is sat on, and he smiles at her._

_But Gally is there, and he catches her, in both arms, like he was waiting for her to fall, he was ready, and he shakes his head at her._

_She smiles at him, relieved._

_She smiles at him, embarrassed._

_“I thought that was you,” Newt says._

_“Only you,” Gally says._

_“I,” Cleo flusters. “What are you doing here?”_

_“I thought I saw you, I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Newt says._

_“I’m a shank.”_

_“No you’re not.”_

_“Gally,” Cleo says, “what are you doing here?”_

_“Making sure you don’t hurt yourself, apparently,” he says._

_“I’m an idiot.”_

_“Maybe a little bit. But a likeable one.”_

_“You aren’t afraid and I admire that.”_

_  
“You need to be more careful.”_

_“You act like you aren’t afraid of what could happen to you.”_

_“You need to be more careful, something could happen to you.”_

_“I like that.”_

_“I worry about that.”_

_“I can look after myself Newt, but thank you.”_

_“I can look after myself Gally, but thank you.”_

_“I don’t doubt that.”_

_“You shouldn’t have to.”_

Cleo opens her eyes, head spinning, she doesn’t understand one of those memories, it’s hers but she doesn’t understand at all. “Cleo!” Brenda screams and Cleo remembers what happened. She fell and now she has to do what she intended to do. She scrambles to her feet and striding across the cracking glass she kicks the crank back, pulling Brenda to her feet and to the side, Brenda holds on to her arm and in one striking movement, as the crank runs to them, Cleo takes an arrow from her bow and plunges it into the glass. It shatters and what was holding them falls under their feet. But Thomas has a hold on Cleo and Brenda is clinging to Cleo. She smiles.

“You are crazy,” Brenda says as Cleo pulls her up onto the rumble. “Like actually insane.”

“Yeah, a little bit,” Cleo confesses, trying to catch her breath.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t risk your life for me,” Brenda says with a smile.

“Yeah well, I say a lot of things,” Cleo gets to her feet. “Can we get moving?”

Minho wakes up to find Marie resting on his chest and he says nothing, he doesn’t move a muscle, he just closes his eyes again, arm wrapped around her, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he can have five more minutes rest.

Cleo notices Brenda’s limp almost instantly. She has a way of always noticing that. Brenda catches her looking and the look on her face says it all. “I know,” she says. “But I can get you to Marcus, you didn’t risk your life for nothing, I’ll get you to your Marie.”

“Brenda,” Cleo whispers. “If that’s a bite-,”

“I know,” she says. “I know.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Cleo asks. Brenda looks surprised.

“You actually do care, a little bit,” Brenda says.

“You aren’t awful,” Cleo says.

“What happened to you?” she is half joking, but she also recalls the look on Cleo’s face when she landed on the glass. That confusion, not the kind you get from impact. The kind you get from learning something, or remembering something.

“I remembered something, something WCKD wanted me to forget. Something I think should have stayed forgotten,” Cleo says. Thomas hears her and looks back.

“When you fell, what did you remember?” he asks.

“Nothing that means anything to anyone but me,” Cleo says. Brenda looks at her, still wanting to know.

“It means something if it means something to you, Cleo,” Brenda says. “They clearly wanted to take it away from you, and that means something.”

“You sound like you’ve experienced Wicked first hand,” Thomas says.

“I have,” she says, but her eyes are focused on Cleo. Thomas tries to guide the way and slowly they make progress, but Brenda won’t let up. “Come on, appease a dying girl.”

“I lost someone,” Cleo says, and she looks to Thomas but he doesn’t appear to be listening anymore “and I won’t ever see them again, and I’m haunted by the memories I have and the ones I don’t and the ones I never will. And I think I just, remembered one, or maybe it was a dream, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s real these days.”

“I lost someone to,” Brenda says. “So, I understand that.”

“You parents?” she asks. She shakes her head.

“Don’t let it being personal, make you feel it isn’t important, it’s important because it’s personal, remember that, they tried to take away who you were to shape you into something else, everything you can hold onto, that reminds you that you aren’t what they made you, it is important.”


	20. Marcus

“Sorry,” Marie apologises for maybe the third or fourth time. Minho laughs it off.

“You really don’t have to apologise,” he says.

“You can’t have been comfortable,” Ma says, embarrassed for falling asleep on him.

“Ma, I really don’t mind, at all,” Minho says. Ma blushes a little, his words coming back to her from the CPR and she just tries to say nothing else. But Minho is smiling at her, and she is so confused, between Thomas and Minho and all that was said and all that wasn’t, Marie can’t even start to process what has happened. So, for reasons she isn’t entirely sure on, she just focuses on Minho, entirely on Minho, almost like nothing else matters. She glances to Teresa on occasion, unsure but almost checking if she is still here, like she might have disappeared somewhere, like Cleo has. And when her mind wanders to Cleo, to the possibilities, she just holds onto Minho tighter, and his smile just increases little by little as they walk.

Cleo is looking at Thomas and he feels it. He ignores it for a long part of the walk around the rubble, until he can’t anymore. “I’m sorry okay,” he says. Cleo raises an eyebrow but doesn’t respond. “Do you really think that was how I planned for it to go?”

“What?” Cleo asks.

“Kissing Marie for the first time, do you really think that was how I wanted to do it?” he asks.

“You had a plan?” Cleo says, almost mocking.

“Yeah, I did, and not getting to speak to her or tell her how I feel, or even understand how she feels, wasn’t part of it. I don’t know how she reacted, I don’t know what she is feeling or thinking and it is consuming me,” Thomas says. “So, I am sorry if I did something that made you annoyed but I am not exactly happy Cleo. I wanted to kiss her for longer than I can remember, she might not remember me but even without my memories I remembered her, at least part of me did. I wanted things to be perfect because she deserved perfect. But I am sorry if I annoyed you.”

“Thomas,” Cleo sighs. “I just, I want to protect her.”

“I know, Minho told me what you said to him,” Thomas says, “I know she means more to you than anything, I know that. You keep giving up your own happiness to try to protect her, so don’t think don’t know. I saw what happened with Newt, you couldn’t take your eyes off him and now you won’t let yourself look at him. And he adores you, but Marie comes first, right? No matter if she wants that for you, no matter what anyone else thinks or says, Cleo’s opinion on what is the right choice in regards to Marie, has to be fact. But Cleo, she isn’t your responsibility.”

“No, she is my best friend,” Cleo says.

“You can’t control your life and other peoples just to try and-,”

“Watch me,” Cleo says.

“Guys,” Brenda says. They both look at her and she stares at them and nods forward. They look and where they are headed and they see the people, the ruins of a city still inhabited. “I need you two to try and blend in now, so less arguing. Please.”

“So, who is Marcus exactly?” Marie asks Jorge.

“I would like to say an old friend,” Jorge says.

“So, who is he actually?” Marie says. Jorge looks at her, a small smile on his lips.

“You don’t miss a thing do you kid? A quick one,” Jorge sighs, “maybe I misjudged you.”

“People often do,” Marie says voice flat.

“Marcus used to run with The Right Arm, getting the kids somewhere safe,” Jorge says. Marie frowns, like something isn’t adding up in her head.

“If you know this guy, and you know he takes people somewhere safe, why were you where we found you, and Brenda, why was she?” Marie asks.

“They wouldn’t want us,” Jorge says. Marie nods.

“But now you have us, and you know they won’t turn you away,” Marie says.

“Like I said, you don’t miss a thing.”

Brenda guides them through the place. Cleo tries hard to not look around too much, the sounds and the people drawing her attention from all sectors, but without her bow now, she felt exposed. It was broken but it could have been fixed and losing it to the fall was taking its toll on her. She really liked that bow, and she gave it up for a girl who is slowly becoming something that will only try to kill her.

“This way,” Brenda says, gesturing to a building.

“Are we sure?” Thomas asks.

“I pay attention Thomas,” Brenda says. “Just trust me okay?”

“Okay,” Cleo says nodding her head. Brenda walks up to the doorway where a man and some women stand between them and the inside. Cleo notices how they all have one thing in common, they all look absent, all look too chirpy for the world they are in, they all look like they drank far too much of Gally’s drinks around the fire.

“We are looking for Marcus,” Brenda tells one of them and she smiles.

“You want to party?” one of the girls asks, reaching to touch the fabric of Thomas’s shirt. Cleo gently removes her hand from him and he looks to Cleo with a silent thank you.

“No, we want Marcus,” Cleo says.

“This is his place, isn’t it?” Brenda asks. The man laughs.

“This is my place,” he says. Cleo looks at the man, he looks happy but sad, like all the happy in the world couldn’t hide the sad underneath.

“So, are you Marcus?” Cleo asks.

“Marcus doesn’t live here anymore,” he says. But she isn’t convinced, the way he paused, the way he looked them up and down, Cleo does not trust this man, not one bit.

“Do you know where we can find him?” Brenda asks.

“Sure,” the man says tilting his bottle, “sure, he is over in Zone B.”

“Zone B?” Thomas asks. One of the girls giggles.

“That’s where they burn the bodies,” she says. Cleo sighs.

“Has anyone else been around here, looking for him, kids around our age,” Cleo says.

“A girl with them, dark hair,” Thomas gestures to Marie’s height and Cleo shakes her head at him.

“I think they might be inside,” the man says. He offers Thomas the bottle. “Drink this.”

“What is that?” Cleo asks, staring at the bottle with reproach.

“The price of admission,” the man says. Cleo looks at him and back at the bottle. Brenda reaches over and with both hands takes the bottle, she drowns a mouthful and looks like she doesn’t enjoy it. She hands the bottle to Cleo.

“You want to find Marie, this is how we do it,” she says. Cleo looks at the bottle and at Thomas who looks just as reluctant, and then without thinking about it too much she takes a swig. The drink tastes unpleasant, but after what she drank in The Glade, it doesn’t bother her so much. She hands the bottle to Thomas.

“Drink up,” she says. “Let’s do this thing.”

“Alright,” the man says guiding them inside, “you kids enjoy the party.”

“Ma,” Minho says. She looks at him.

“Yes?” she asks.

“It’s going to be okay,” he reassures her, looking at the people at a distance. “We will find them, and it will be okay.”

“Oh,” Marie says, like returning into herself. “Yes, yes we will.”

Newt looks at her, her lack of concern, her lack of… anything in the absence of both Cleo and Thomas is worrying, overwhelmingly worrying. He can’t see the missing puzzle piece, like before. But before it was so far from his mind because he was so focused on trying to tell Cleo how he felt that he never considered that those feelings would be there. Now he can’t help but almost blame himself for her behaviour, like somehow, whatever is going on with Marie, is his fault, he just hasn’t figured out why yet.

“We should,” Brenda says, the drink already starting to take effect, alongside the effects of the bite.

“Split up?” Cleo says, feeling a haze start. “Look for the others.”

“That seems like a good idea,” Thomas agrees. They nod and separate into the crowd.

Cleo can’t help but notice the crowd, almost entirely kids like her, almost all exactly like her. All drunk or something more, she can’t tell. The world around her is appearing in layers, triple vision and haze. The sound is all distorted. She shakes her head hoping to shake the bad feeling away but it doesn’t go. She sees a flash of curls and she tries to follow where it came from. She sees Marie in the archway by the stairs, she is also dazed and giggling, she is sat with Newt.

“Marie,” she calls out and Marie looks up. She looks surprised, but she doesn’t move to greet her. Instead, she just leans into Newt, pulling him in by his collar, kissing him. Cleo stares at them as Marie maintains eye contact.

“You thought?” Marie asks, pulling away and giggling. Newt keeps his eyes on Marie, he doesn’t even recognise Cleo’s presence. “Oh Cleo, you really haven’t figured it out yet have you?”

“Marie?” she asks again, breath caught in her throat. Her vision almost flashes, like the image melts away and she is left looking at a young girl, who looks nothing like Marie kissing a boy who looks nothing like Newt. The girl smiles at her.

“Want to join in sweetie?” she asks. Cleo just shakes her head and steps back.

“It’s in my head, it’s in my head,” she whispers.

“What is in your head?” comes Janson’s voice from over her shoulder. She gets ready to try to floor him only for the vision to dissolve and leave a confused looking teen being held in tight grip. She lets him go and apologises over and over. Reality slipping and without her anchor to tell her what is real and what isn’t Cleo feels herself drowning in it.

Thomas moves through the people with the same dazed feeling as the rest of them, everyone else seems to be having fun, but Thomas just feels sick, a sickness in his stomach that he can’t explain, or maybe he can but he doesn’t want to. He just wants to find the others and get out. But everyone looks so different, everything looks so unfamiliar, each time he thinks he sees them, they disappear into nothing. He tries to call out but his throat dries out, he can’t speak. He smacks into someone and they turn to look at him. It’s Marie, except it isn’t, she looks different, she looks… haunting. She holds a gun out towards him. “You scared Thomas?” she asks.

“I don’t understand,” Thomas says. She laughs and he realises she isn’t look at him, but behind him. He looks over his shoulder and sees Marie again, but his Marie, the Marie he recognises. Her eyes fixed on the other Marie as she goes to pull the trigger. They both disappear and in their place is Newt, Minho, Frypan, except the dark veins and wild eyes, the infection spreading through them. Newt goes to speak but words do not come out, only blood and a dark curdling growl. Thomas tries to run away and they disappear.

Brenda grabs his hand in the crowd, the real Brenda as far as he can tell. “They aren’t here,” he tells her. She shakes her head slowly. “He lied.” She nods. “Where do we go next? We have to… we have to keep looking.” Thomas’s speech goes a little wavy as he tries to clear his head.

“We aren’t going to find them,” Brenda says. “They are gone, and we are lost.”

“We need to find them,” Thomas tries again.

“No,” Brenda says, “without Marcus we are done. We can’t find them, we can’t find Th Right Arm. We are done, don’t you get that?”

“What do we do?” Thomas asks. “Where’s Cleo?”

“Around,” Brenda says, “that girl can take care of herself.”

“If anything happened to her, Marie would-,”

“You aren’t going to find Marie again, you just… you have to relax,” Brenda says. Thomas looks at her, barely able to think straight.

“How do I relax?” he asks. Brenda manages a weak smile.

“Like this,” she says and kisses him. In his confusion, with the drink in his system and his head still reeling it is a moment before he pulls away from her, he looks at her and just see’s Marie, sweet Marie. With her smile and her laugh and her… self. The girl he loves, just for a moment, he sees. And then the illusion fades and he sees Brenda looking back at him, lost and dosed up on the drugs in the drink.

“You aren’t her,” he says, his voice ringing through the room clear as day.

“I guess not,” Brenda says.

Cleo who has stood at the top of a staircase trying to see across the crowd. She sees Thomas and Brenda and unsure on her feet starts to plan a route through the crowd. She sees from the corner of her eyes, what she thinks is Newt and Minho. She shakes her head, ignoring the illusion and tries to force her way through the people, to where Thomas and Brenda stand.

Thomas falling victim to another illusion falls to the floor, hitting the ground hard. Brenda leans over him trying to check if he is okay, but her shaky hands and blurring vision make it difficult.

Cleo gets all but to them when she sees him. She sees him just like she feared she would, but in this mess of vision and people she doesn’t care that he isn’t real. Gally moves through the crowd and places a hand on her arm, and she swears she could feel it. “Cleo,” he says above the noise. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Cleo says, her eyes scanning him, over and over, the illusion refusing to fade. “I’m so sorry.”

“Cleo, Cleo what happened?” he asks.

“I never said it back,” Cleo says, “I didn’t know better,” Gally looks confused and concerned as she rambles, “I should have said it back because it’s true, I didn’t know it then but I know it now. And I lost you and I’m sorry.”

“Cleo,” he shakes her gently. “Cleo it’s okay you’re safe.”

“I’m sorry,” she says almost crying now.

“It’s me,” he says. She places a hand on his face, not caring if he is an illusion created by the drink or her own grief, just glad he is here with her, in this darkness, in this place. He places a hand over hers and she manages a smile.

“G-,”

“It’s me, Newt, are you okay?” he asks. And the illusion shatters. Cleo looks at Newt, the real Newt, here in the room, holding her up as she threatens to fall down. “Cleo?” he asks as she blacks out.

Cleo wakes up on a sofa in a room she doesn’t recognise. Newt and Marie are sat next to her, and lain on the floor is a still unconscious Thomas. Cleo runs a hand through her hair. “I feel…” Cleo says.

“Hungover?” Marie suggests with a smile.

“Worse,” Cleo says. “So much worse.”

Cleo looks around and notices the others are watching Jorge who is beating the guy from the doorway, currently tied to a chair. The guy, is in fact, Marcus.

“What did I miss?” Cleo asks.

“Well while you guys were partying,” Minho teases. “We were trying to track down this asshole.”

“That partying wasn’t optional and it wasn’t fun,” Cleo says reaching down to shake Thomas into consciousness.

“You kind of scared us back there,” Newt says.

“That stuff they made us drink, it was awful,” Cleo says.

“Yeah, you were a state,” Newt says. “Do you remember what you saw, because you looked at me like I wasn’t really there.”

Cleo remembers exactly what happened. She tried to tell Gally, whom she shot dead, that she loved him, and she didn’t care he wasn’t real and she didn’t care if she was going crazy and she tried to tell him, except it wasn’t him, it was Newt. “I don’t really remember anything,” she lies.

“I do,” Thomas says coming around. “It was awful, I saw,” he looks at Marie and the relief that floods over him at his presence is immeasurable, “you’re okay.”

“I’m okay” she says, with a soft smile.

“She tried to kill you,” Thomas says.

“Who?” Cleo asks.

“Other, her,” Thomas says. Marie laughs it off, telling him his hallucinations were just that, hallucinations and it doesn’t mean anything. Except something about it sticks with Cleo like a knife to the stomach. Thomas explains most of what he saw, his friends becoming monsters, dying. Marie looks at Cleo now, convinced she remembers exactly what happened, but isn’t willing to share it.

Newt helps Thomas to join the others and Marie just looks at Cleo, concerned. “You saw Gally, didn’t you?” she asks. Cleo looks at her, and nods. She did see Gally, she didn’t only see Gally, but she did see Gally, therefore it isn’t a lie. “You know he wasn’t-,”

“I am only half-crazy Marie, I know he wasn’t real, I just see him like he is,” she sighs.

“I’m sorry, I should have been with you,” Marie says. Cleo grabs her hand.

“You are safe, and that’s all that matters now,” she says. “How are you feeling?”

“How am I feeling, you jumped through a building?” Marie asks trying to fact check what Brenda has told them. “You got chased by cranks, you lost your bow,” she looks so sad for Cleo, Cleo just smiles gently.

“But you are safe, that’s all that matters,” she says again. She glances to Thomas who is watching Jorge beat the truth out of Marcus. “So how are you feeling?”

“Minho seems to think Thomas has feelings for me,” Marie says. Cleo immediately flushes, and Ma stares at her. “You knew.”

“It’s obvious,” Cleo defends.

“You didn’t tell me,” Ma says.

“Do you really want to play that game?” Cleo retorts.

“Okay,” Marie agrees. “I won’t play that game.”

“So,” Cleo says, smiling at her. “How do you feel about this development?”

“I don’t know how to feel,” Marie says. “I really don’t have the time to think about it.”

“You deserve to be happy Marie, whatever that means,” she looks to the boys, Minho, Thomas and Newt basically sat on the same chair the way they huddle around. Marie follows her gaze.

“He’s yours, you know that right, he always has been,” Ma says. Cleo sighs.

“No,” she shakes her head. “No he isn’t.”

“Cleo,” Marie tries.

“I had one thing that was mine, completely, mine,” Cleo says. “And I shot him.”

“You’ve loved Newt since forever,” Marie says.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.”

“They get drunk, they have a good time, and then Wicked comes and takes the ones they want,” Marcus says grabbing both Cleo and Marie’s attention almost in sync.

“What?” Cleo demands.

“It’s what I do to survive, kid it isn’t personal,” Marcus tries.

“It’s fucking personal,” Cleo snaps.

It isn’t much longer before Marcus has given up all he knows, including the location of his truck Bertha, much to his own protest. However, he is looking worryingly smug as they start to file out.

“We are missing something,” Cleo whispers.

“When aren’t we?” Thomas asks. “There is always something around the corner ready to screw us over, why will this be any different?”

“You should talk to Marie,” Cleo says.

“You should talk to Newt,” he responds.

“Shut up,” Cleo sighs moving away from him. She catches Teresa in the corner of her eye, fiddling with something in her pocket, she hears the static and recognises it instantly. “Teresa, do you have a communicator?” Teresa looks like she is about to deny it, but Cleo actually smiles at her. “Bloody hell, I am actually impressed, that’s some actual initiative, some ingenuity on your behalf.” Teresa can’t comprehend the compliment for a moment and looks for the insult in her words but can’t find one.

“Thank you?” she responds, unsure.

“There may even be use for you yet,” Cleo jokes.

Jorge tells everyone to grab what they need before they go to get Bertha. The kids look around to see if they are missing anything, and Cleo feeling the absence of her bow, looks over into the distance at a bare tree, wondering if maybe, just maybe, there could be a branch she could use. She doesn’t say a word as she wonders over, inspecting the tree.

She hears it, not helicopters or sirens, they aren’t looking for them, but heavily armoured trucks, moving their way through the area towards the building they just left. Marcus said Wicked came and took what they wanted from the kids at the party, looking for immunes. It should have clicked, he never specified when they did that, only that they did. And seemingly today was the day.

“That’s Wicked,” Brenda says, seeing a truck in the distance. “We need to go, do we have everyone?”

“What about the others inside?” Aris asks.

“We can’t help them, not now,” Jorge says. “We just have to get you guys to Bertha, to safety. Come on.”

“Wait,” Newt says. “Where is Cleo?”

They all look around and no one can see her. Marie looks panicked for a moment and then she suddenly doesn’t anymore. She goes to grab Minho to help him on the way but he has gone to Newt, who is starting to get mad. “Where did she go?” Newt asks.

“It’s Cleo she probably is around here somewhere,” Minho reassures him.

“No, what if they have her, what if they already have her,” Newt says. “Why was no one keeping an eye on her?”

“It isn’t anyone’s job,” Brenda says. “And she can handle herself, I have seen it.”

“You don’t understand, she isn’t herself,” Newt says. Marie looks at him and all she sees is him panicking. She doesn’t make the differentiation between anger and worry and panic, she doesn’t see a difference between what happened at the zipline and now. She approaches him slowly, not herself at all, all logic, no Marie. “Marie,” Newt says.

Cleo turns the corner keeping close to the wall, out of Wicked’s view. But she can see the others now, so she keeps walking, low and slow.

“You have to calm down,” Marie says. Newt looks even more confused.

“I have to calm down?” he asks. “Why are you so calm?”

“You need to calm down,” she says again. Minho looks up and sees Cleo quietly making her way over and he turns to say something but before Cleo can get her words out, before Minho can reassure Newt, before Marie can see Cleo and come back to herself. Something happens, almost in slow motion.

Applying the same logic as before, Marie who isn’t even Marie anymore just leans forward and kisses Newt. Everyone freezes where they stand. Minho looking at Marie and Cleo, almost next to them all now, looking at them all. “Marie?” Cleo says finally finding her voice.

Hearing Cleo’s voice Marie comes back and pulls back startled. She looks to Cleo who is just watching her. Marie starts to spin, not sure what happened, she doesn’t remember anything between the Brenda spotting the trucks and Cleo standing in front of her. But she looks at Newt, the same Newt she just woke up from the fog kissing. The same Newt less than an hour before she told Cleo to not be afraid to love. The same Newt she has tried time and time again to bury her feelings for.

Newt is frozen, but not for the same reason as the others. Newt is stuck in a memory.

_-Flashback-_

_Newt smiles at Marie who is checking something off a piece of paper while sat next to him, dressed in a lab coat. She keeps glancing at him, and blushing a little. “What do you want?” she asks._

_“Nothing,” Newt says, looking away. She leans over, curious._

_“Just tell me,” she says. He turns back and quickly kisses her._

_“Newt,” Marie says pulling back and shaking her head._

_“What did I do wrong?” he asks._

_“You can’t do that,” Marie says. “Not ever.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“You can’t kiss me Newt, you just can’t.”_

“Cleo,” Marie says. “I… that wasn’t how it looked.”

“No, it’s fine,” Cleo says. Her memories of the party and her reality almost colliding in her vision. The smile illusion Marie had kissing Newt, almost distracting her from the reality.

“She,” Newt says coming back to reality. “I was panicking-,”

“It’s fine, really,” Cleo says. “Don’t justify it to me.”

Minho just stares at them both. “We need to move.”

“I agree with Minho, Wicked are here, we really need to move,” Cleo says grabbing Minho and pushing him forward, towards the others.

“Leo,” Marie says. Cleo looks back at her, smiling the best she can.

“It’s fine,” she says even though her heart hurts and it aches to breathe. “Really Marie, it is fine.”

She doesn’t mean it, it isn’t fine, it isn’t fine that it hurts but that isn’t the worst part, that isn’t the reason most of all that Cleo isn’t fine. She saw it, in Marie’s eyes right before she kissed him. She sae it is disappear from her eyes when she heard her voice. She saw it before, time and time again. She heard it when Newt got attacked in The Scorch even if she didn’t want to. She heard it in her voice when she responded to certain questions. She saw it in her eyes when Janson said those words when they escaped the compound. The words she saw burn in the fire, the words in the file, that she couldn’t understand, that she didn’t want to understand ‘implanted subconscious alternate’. The name that has been bouncing around her head none stop like a warning sign. Curie. And the final piece, Thomas’s fear, the fear he didn’t understand, the two Marie’s the one he knew and the one he didn’t. Except she wasn’t Marie, she was Curie. Marie is Curie.


	21. Chapter 21

Cleo keeps Minho walking forward. “Did she?” Minho tries. Cleo looks at him, with the softness she can rarely muster when it comes to anyone except Marie.  
“Look,” Cleo says. “He was panicking, she feels so awful about everything she feels she failed to do, failed to help with. Chuck, Alby, Winston, she has had a lot of losses Minho, she is just trying to protect everyone, and she realised that if Newt spirals it’s a lot worse than the rest of us… you should know that.” Minho looks at her, looking for traces of jealousy, any reason to believe Cleo is only telling him this to try and make him feel better. “You know what really happened with Newt, it is so important to keep Newt present, and she did the fastest thing to work.”  
“You were right there,” Minho says.  
“They didn’t know that,” Cleo says. “It’s my bad really, I shouldn’t scare you guys like that.”  
“Why are you so calm?” Minho says. Cleo smiles at him, and it hurts to smile at him, not as much as it hurts to smile at Marie but it hurts. Cleo hates lying, she doesn’t remember why but it runs deep, like a memory. And every step feeling like a lie.   
“Because it didn’t mean anything,” Cleo says. “You know that right.”  
“I guess,” Minho says. “Besides I got CPR before anyone was doing any… kissing.”  
Cleo manages a laugh and she surprises even herself as how convincing she sounds. “There you go Minho, don’t let anything hold you down,” she says.  
“Why are you suddenly on my side?” he asks.  
“I’m on Marie’s side,” Cleo says simply. “You’re a good guy Minho, I said that before, I meant it. I think you could be really good for her, and I don’t want you to give up on her when that might not be what she wants.”  
“She talks about me?” he asks.   
“I can’t answer that,” Cleo says. Minho looks more like himself again, the pain slowly ebbing in his face, he seems to believe Cleo. That makes one of them.  
“So not a no?” Minho says as they near the truck.   
“Not a no, but not a yes,” Cleo says. He smirks.  
“I’ll take that.”

They start checking Bertha over, loading all the supplies and trying to figure out how to fit ten people into the car. Marie is watching Cleo, trying to find the words to say, still unsure of what happened or how it happened and knowing that she has probably caused something awful. But to her surprise Cleo walks over and takes her hand, pulling her away from the group, out of sight, out of earshot.   
“Cleo,” Marie tries. Cleo untucks the gun from her shirt and Marie watches very confused. She lifts the gun and points it in Minho’s direction. She watches at the shift happens and within seconds Marie is no longer Marie, and Cleo gets shoved and disarmed in one simply move.   
“Nice to finally meet you,” Cleo says, dragging herself from the dirt. “Curie.”  
“You think you’re smart?” Curie asks, smiling, Cleo’s gun in hand. “You aren’t that smart.”  
“You didn’t actually think I would shoot him, did you?” Cleo asks.   
“Can’t take the risk,” Curie says.  
“But you can let Winston die, you can try and leave Newt behind, you can…” Cleo trails off.  
“I have priorities,” Curie says.   
“And hiding isn’t one of them?” Cleo asks. She laughs.  
“Not from you,” Curie says.  
“You aren’t a threat, you won’t tell because you want to protect precious Marie, and she doesn’t even know I am here,” Curie says. “You wouldn’t want to hurt her, and you can’t hurt me.”  
“I will figure out what the hell my mother did to her and I will get rid of you,” Cleo says. Curie shakes her head.  
“No, Cleopatra, you won’t,” she says. “I’m a fail safe.”  
“You’re an imposter.”  
“You wound me,” she mocks. Cleo wants to grab her but she knows she can’t, it isn’t Marie, but it could still hurt Marie and she isn’t willing to take that risk.   
“What did you want Cleopatra, you went to all this effort to talk to me, what do you want?” Curie asks.  
“I want you gone,” Cleo says plainly. “I thought that was obvious.”  
“You don’t control me anymore Cleopatra, or her” Curie says.   
“I never controlled Marie,” Cleo looks unsteady, so angry but nowhere to put that anger.  
“You can, point your gun at me or something if it will make you feel better.”  
“You know it won’t,” Cleo says through gritted teeth.  
“You can’t be angry, because I have her face,” Curie laughs.  
“You have more than her face,” Cleo says. “You are her, just, not.”  
“Aw, you struggling with it?” Curie asks. “Come on, you’ll like me better, I am much more like you.”  
“We are nothing alike,” Cleo says. “And I would never like you better-,”  
“Oh, please Cleopatra, don’t lie to yourself, Marie is so…” Curie searches for a word. “Weak.”  
“You don’t know anything about Marie if you think even for a moment, she is weak,” Cleo snaps.  
“Yes because a strong person tortures herself over love for years,” Curie says sarcastically.   
“You don’t know what you are talking about.”  
“The blonde boy, with the hands, I don’t get it but, I do know what I am talking about,” Curie says.  
“Newt, his name is Newt, you should know that, why don’t you know that?” Cleo asks.  
“He isn’t important,” Curie says. Something snaps and Cleo nearly lunges for her. “Wow, you’ve got some anger Cleopatra.” Curie mocks as she dodges her and Cleo nearly falls back to the dirt.  
“He is, how dare you,” Cleo says.  
“Not a priority,” Curie says. She looks her up and down and it becomes clear to Cleo, why Curie is having this conversation with her. She knows she can’t out Curie without hurting Marie, so she isn’t a threat, but Curie is trying to asses Cleo.   
“You don’t know what to do with me, do you?” Cleo asks. “I am not built into your list.”  
“Your status is unknown, it makes you a difficult variable,” she says. “And Ava didn’t leave any instructions for you.”  
“Of course, she didn’t…”  
“I am here to protect the boys, surely that is a good thing,” Curie says.  
“Not the way you do it, not with a priority list,” Cleo says.  
“Honey, you have a priority list and if you claim any different it isn’t me you are lying to.”  
“Give her back to me,” Cleo says. “I am done talking to a cold imitation-,”  
“You want to call me the imitation? Cleopatra, I have all her memories and she has none of mine, so who is the real person here,” Curie asks, almost angry. Cleo sees the nerve she has touched.  
“You don’t have control, not really, you are like an instinct, whenever there is danger, you kick in, or when she gets confused, but you can’t control her, not really, she is still in control,” Cleo says.  
“Barely,” Curie says. “She’s not much competition for driving privileges.”  
“Except she clearly is,” Cleo says. “That scares you.”  
“Nothing scares me,” Curie says.  
“I don’t think that’s true, I think you need to believe Marie is weak because otherwise you know this is a battle you are losing before it’s even really begun,” Cleo says.  
“Your precious Marie is so scared of her own shadow, she hurt herself for years, over you, over him, over being second best, such a threat,” Curie says. Cleo knows she is trying to get under her skin, trying to rile her up, she knows that. But she still wants to punch her. “Both of you, such a fool for sacrifice.”  
“Screw you,” Cleo says. Curie laughs.   
“You’re not my type,” Curie says. “Her type, not mine.” Cleo says nothing for a while, she just looks at her and Curie scoffs after a moment. “It’s funny, your voice, usually it calls her back, like some kind of homing beacon,” she steps closer to Cleo and Cleo lets her, “yet I’m so close to you, I could,” she points Cleo’s gun at Cleo, “I could just, kill you, and she is nowhere to be seen. That’s strange, isn’t it?”  
“You aren’t going to hurt me, or you would have already,” Cleo says. “I am not enough of a threat and when you don’t know how valuable I might be, you don’t want to risk it.”  
“You’re right,” Curie says, she rests the gun pointed at herself. “But you also know I am a means to an end, and I am not afraid to do anything, not to die, but Marie, Marie is, so I know you’ll behave, because you have to.”  
Thomas’s voice cuts through them both and Marie coms back into herself, staring at the hand that holds the gun. “Cleo?” she asks. Cleo just smiles at her and pulls her into a hug.  
“We are okay,” Cleo says.   
“I need to apologise, I need to explain it wasn’t what it looked like, I,” Cleo just hugs her tighter.  
“Silly Ma,” Cleo whispers into her ear. “Don’t you think I know you would never ever do anything to hurt me.” She pulls away and tucks her hair out her face, smiling at her. “You’re my Marie, you are a literal angel.”  
“I,” Marie says. Cleo just keeps smiling. She has to, for Marie. Because Marie has not hurt her, Marie has done nothing wrong. Marie is another innocent in Wicked’s cruel game. Marie is another pawn. And Cleo will be damned if she lets it destroy her. So, she smiles at the person she adores most in the world and she tells her all will be fine. Because Cleo will make it so. No matter what it takes, and no one has to know.  
“Girls, we need to get going,” Thomas says. Cleo slips the gun back under her shirt and taking Marie’s hand she leads her back to the car.  
“It’s going to be squeeze,” Jorge apologises. “But we all need to pile in.”  
Jorge moves into the driver’s seat and Aris and Fry are quick to take the back. Brenda and Teresa pile in next to them, leaving the two seats in the middle and the passenger. Minho and Thomas climb in the middle and both turn immediately to Marie who looks lost. “I don’t think there’s” she tries.   
Thomas and Minho share a look and Minho smiles, “we will keep you safe, come on,” Minho says.  
“Oh no I can’t,” Marie tries. “It won’t be comfortable for you at all,” she tries.   
“We don’t mind Marie,” Thomas says. Marie looks to Cleo for some kind of back up except Cleo just shrugs. While Marie climbs into Bertha trying to navigate sitting between the laps of Minho and Thomas, continuously apologising and being her sweet, awkward self. Newt looks to Cleo.  
“That wasn’t what it looked like,” Newt says.  
“Why would it matter?” Cleo asks.  
“I need you to know it wasn’t,” Newt says.  
“And why do you need me to know that?” Cleo asks. Newt can’t make sense of exactly what happened and he can make even less sense of the memory, but he wants to be honest. As honest as he knows how to be.   
“Because I haven’t given up,” Newt says, “and I know what you’re going to say but you don’t know everything, and you don’t know what is going on with Marie all the time, and we don’t have our memories and we don’t know so much. So, when I say I know something it matters, and I know I am not giving up.” He expects an eye roll or some kind of smartass comment in return, typical Cleo rejection techniques but she just smiles.  
“You should take the passenger seat,” Cleo says. Newt moves to get in put drags her by the wrist with him. Cleo sitting on Newt’s lap looks back to Marie and they share almost the exact same concerned expression. But the boys are smiling despite themselves.  
As Bertha hits some bumps in the road. Cleo tries to focus on not making eye contact with Newt, Marie continuously apologies for any inconvenience she may be causing to Minho or Thomas and Frypan makes a comment about the girls in the truck.   
“Jealous Fry?” Cleo calls to the back.  
“No” Fry says simply. “None of you are my type.”  
“What’s your type, Fry?” Cleo asks. All four of the girls are looking at him now and he realises it is possible he has backed himself into a corner, because all four of the girls are very different. He looks at Cleo, Marie, Teresa and Brenda in turn and says the only thing he thinks can get him out of this situation.  
“Blondes,” he says slowly. Cleo laughs and without considering her situation or more specifically her seating arrangement she nods.  
“Same,” she says before it occurs to her. Newt smirks at her and she feels the regret in her chest. “I did not,” Cleo tries.  
“Sorry, did that hurt,” Marie says coming to Cleo’s rescue. Thomas won’t look at her.   
“No,” he reassures her.   
“Hey Thomas,” Cleo says leaning over the edge of the seat to look at him, unintentionally being closer to Newt in the process. “Didn’t you lose your torch running from the cranks?”  
“Yeah why?” he asks. Cleo just smiles.  
“No reason.”


	22. So Very Familiar

_“Do you think they’ll make it?” Cleo asks._

_“What do you mean?” Gally asks, moving some of the stray hairs from Cleo’s face._

_“Every day, they risk their lives, running, and we lose some of them, not every day but over time, and one day there won’t be any runners left, and maybe that day will come not because we finally found a way out, and runners don’t exist anymore, but because we won’t find a way out, and we still stop getting new friends and we will be left with just the emptiness of the absence old ones.”_

_“You’re sad today,” Gally says, gently tilting her head to look up at him. “Have you always been this sad?”_

_“Not always,” she says._

_“So yes,” he says. “Just not when people are looking.”_

_“Why ask question you know the answer to?” Cleo asks. He smiles down at her._

_“Maybe I am hoping one day you can be honest with me,” he says and kisses her._

There is a jolt in the road and Cleo wakes up, startled. Newt looks at her, face very close to hers. “You’re okay,” he says. Cleo looks around and she remembers where she is and takes in a deep breath.

“You were talking in your sleep,” Newt whispers to her.

“Was I?” Cleo asks. “Did I say anything fun?”

“You were talking about The Glade, about how you didn’t believe any of us would make it out, not really.”

“Dreams are funny thing,” Cleo says, even though she knows it wasn’t a dream, it was a memory.

Jorge stops the car as the road in front of blocked by many discarded cars. Cleo looks at them all, she hasn’t seen such an example of human absence, not even in the city, where the buildings were crumbling down. “Looks like we are on foot from here kids,” Jorge says. Cleo clambers out and looks to Newt who is smiling at her.

“I told you not to let me fall asleep on you,” she reminds him. He shrugs.

“I don’t have to do everything you tell me Cleo,” he says.

_-Flashback-_

_“You’re beautiful, you know that, right?”_

_“Don’t say that.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because I told you not to.”_

_“I don’t have to do everything you tell me Cleo,” Gally laughs._

_“I would rather you did.”_

_“Except that you like that I don’t.”_

Cleo blushes. “I,” she can’t find her words and Newt looks a little too smug. “Shut up,” she says, “okay, just shut up.”

Cleo holds her hand to Marie and helps her off the boys and out the truck. Marie looks at both Minho and Thomas expecting them to follow, but they just say sitting for a moment, “are you coming?” Marie asks. Cleo, trying not to laugh, gently pulls Marie away.

“Give them a minute,” Cleo says gently.

After a moment they all start to make their way through the discarded cars. Cleo looks at the cars, they look almost completely functional, except for a few bullet holes here and there. The insides are striped clean, nothing to salvage or collect. It feels quiet. Thomas leans over to touch the glass where a bullet hit the screen and someone shoots at him. Cleo drags Marie to the floor so fast, before even considering she likely doesn’t need to, because Curie is quicker than her, smarter than her, and likely more able to actually protect Marie than her.

“Are we being shot at?” Teresa asks.

“Back at it with the dumb questions,” Cleo says. “Full circle.” Cleo can’t help but look at Brenda who is looking worse, she doesn’t understand how no one else has noticed.

“Did anyone see where those bloody shots come from?” Newt asks. Cleo looks around, trying to figure it out, but she can see Marie, or rather Curie, figuring it out too. Cleo draws her gun just in time for a girl to point a rifle at Thomas.

“Hands up,” she orders. Everyone slowly stands but Cleo keeps her gun close to chest. “Turn around,” she instructs.

Cleo holds her gun out, facing the two girls with a smile. “I wouldn’t try anything,” Cleo recommends. One of the girls, a blonde goes to speak but the other is fixated on something, something behind Cleo. “Cleo put your gun down,” Aris says slowly.

“Aris?” the girl asks.

“Harriet?” Aris responds, lowering Cleo’s arm and moving past her. The girls remove their bandanas to reveal smiles. “Sonya?” The girls pull him into a hug and the others just watch. Fry makes brief eye contact with Cleo as she starts to put her gun away.

“She’s my type,” Fry whispers, mostly in an attempt to defuse the tension.

“Same,” Cleo says eyes on Sonya. Fry moves from looking jovial to bothered immediately.

“You really get whatever you want, don’t you?” Fry asks. Cleo laughs.

“No, I really don’t,” she says.

“This is Harriet and Sonya, they were in my Maze,” Aris explains. The others nod.

“We could have shot you,” Sonya tells Aris, who just smiles.

“You didn’t,” he says.

“I nearly shot her,” Harriet says gesturing to Cleo.

“Cleo’s tough, she could probably take it,” Aris says. He explains how he got here, and who the others are to Harriet and Sonya and they nod, listening. They trust Aris, which means, they trust us. But Cleo can’t stop looking at Sonya, she seems familiar. Not in the way Marie did when she arrived or even Newt, but it is like even less of a memory, more like a dream. Or like she reminds her of someone, someone she can’t reach. She can’t put the pieces together but she seems… so very familiar.

The girls lead them through the cars and the rock, and let them in. Assuring them that they are here, they have found it, what they have been looking for, The Right Arm.

“Isn’t The Right Arm supposed to be an army?” Marie asks. Harriet kind of nods.

“Vince will explain everything,” she says.

“Who’s Vince?” Thomas asks.

“The man who decides if you can stay,” Sonya says. Cleo moves closer to Sonya, like it might help her understand. She can feel Newt and Marie watching her, she knows she must look odd, but she doesn’t particularly care.

“You remind me of someone,” Cleo tells Sonya, who looks at her, curious, “like I’ve met you before, in a dream or something.”

“Are you,” Sonya pauses. “Are you hitting on me?”

Cleo is a little taken aback. “I mean, I wasn’t,” she says, “but I can be.”

Sonya laughs and it is a delicate laugh and it makes Cleo smile, but Marie grabs her pulling her back to her side. “Leave the pretty girls alone,” Marie says.

“She seems familiar,” Cleo tries.

“Sure, it isn’t just the attraction” Ma says.

“Shut up,” Cleo pouts, but she squeezes Ma’s arm as a reassurance. She can feel Newt’s eyes on her. “Yes Newt?”

“Nothing,” he says playing innocent. “Nothing at all.”

“What the hell?” asks a man coming through the crowd.

“Look,” Harriet says. “This kid, this is Aris, we knew him in The Maze, I vouch for him, I know him and he vouches for them, so I trust him.”

“You know I trust you girls, but these are strangers,” he says. Cleo realises quite quickly her input in this situation is more likely to cause friction than be helpful, so she steps back, trying to focus on anything but what is happening. So she brings her attention back to Brenda, who is looking very unwell, and it worries Cleo, she knows what comes next and all the push and shove aside, she has grown to quite like Brenda.

“Vince, they’re immunes,” Harriet says. Vince’s expression changes, scanning them all.

“Did you check them?” Vince asks. Brenda collapses and Cleo catches her, falling to the ground with her, put keeping her head from hitting the ground.

“Hey, you’re okay,” Cleo says, but Vince is already drawing his gun. Jorge is trying to help, but he sees it, the blood soaking through her jeans at the bottom, from where the bite is, Cleo and Brenda tried their best to bandage it up, to hide it, but it’s there and it’s obvious. When Jorge pulls the fabric up and teeth marks are on full display, Cleo sees a kind of parental care she doesn’t recall ever seeing, in the eyes of Jorge.

“Crank,” Vince yells, “we have a crank!” He points his gun at Brenda and Cleo pulls out hers in a heartbeat.

“You don’t point that at her,” Cleo growls.

“Wait,” Marie tries. But Cleo can see it, Curie in the back of her head, fighting to get forward, Brenda is a threat now, Brenda is a risk, Brenda is something Curie will have to take care of…

“Wait, wait,” Thomas says putting himself between the guns and Brenda.

“Thomas back down,” Marie says, she catches Cleo’s eye and Cleo knows who she is looking at.

“It only just happened, she isn’t a threat to anyone, she’s not dangerous yet, please, please just, put the guns down,” Thomas says. Cleo can’t take her eyes off Curie, who is looking around, as if to find something, a way to fix the problem. Cleo won’t let that happen, if not for Brenda, for Marie, Marie may not know what Curie does but if she Curie crosses that line, the consequences for Marie are unbearable.

“We can’t let cranks in, we can’t protect them, or we lose everything we have built, we can’t help her,” Vince says.

“Vince stop,” comes a female voice. A woman with brown hair and worried eyes comes out of a nearby tent. She looks at Thomas.

“She’s going to turn and we can’t help her,” Vince says. The woman doesn’t even look at Brenda, her eyes are fixed on Thomas.

“He can,” she says. Thomas looks confused and Marie looks more like herself and moves to Thomas’s side blocking Brenda from view. “Hello Thomas, Marie, I’m so glad to see you.”

“You know us?” Marie asks. She nods.

“They put you in The Maze, I’m glad they didn’t just shoot you,” she says, she looks to Thomas, who looks back at her, like a vague memory. “You too, that explains a lot. I thought you were dead after our last call.”

“Mary…Wait…” Vince says, slowly catching on.

“I thought they would kill you both, especially with how Ava is,” Mary says. “Marie, the last time we saw each other, you said you couldn’t do it anymore, not after what they had done. I agreed. Ava had never let me even near the co-ordinates for The Maze’s, I didn’t know enough about where I was the whole time, I worked with you to be much use to anyone once I left. I knew what the compound looked like where we studied you all, but I never remembered getting there or leaving, Ava was tricky like that. That serum she uses, to wipe your memories, even we had to use it, so very protective, and I didn’t understand it. Not until what they did. Marie you kept in contact with me, until one day you disappeared. You were giving us everything from the inside, warnings about Wicked, progress updates, supply drops. You saved so many lives Marie. And Thomas, the last time we spoke, you gave us the locations of every base, compound, trial and lab. I don’t know how you got them, but we couldn’t have done what we did without you.” Marie and Thomas share a look.

“They were our sources, she was the one who warned us about the camp raids?” Vince asks. Mary nods.

“She saved us time and time again,” Mary says. “And Thomas, you gave me hope, for the mistake I couldn’t correct.”

“Cleo,” Thomas says.

“What?” Cleo asks from the floor, tuning back in at the sound of her name. Mary looks through the crowd at Cleo.

“Cleopatra?” she asks and pushes past the others and throws her arms around Cleo, Cleo stands frozen and perplexed as the woman hugs her. “By the heavens, it’s actually you.”

“Sorry, do I know you?” Cleo asks, looking up at the woman who has her arms tightly around her.

“Oh shit,” she steps back, dusting herself off. “She took your memories, of course you have no idea who I am.”

“Cleo, that’s Mary Cooper,” Thomas says. Cleo looks at the woman and she sees it now.

“Aunt Mary?” Cleo asks. Mary smiles.

“Hey little pharaoh,” she says. The sunlight hits Cleo’s necklace and reflects, catching Mary’s eye. “You still have it.”

“I still have what?” Cleo asks.

“I’m sorry,” Mary says reaching to touch Cleo’s face but pulling back at the last moment. “I know you don’t know who I am, but it is so good to see you alive.”

Cleo touches her necklace and then looks to Brenda. “Family reunion later, we need to help her,” Cleo gestures to Brenda. Mary nods, she takes Thomas and Brenda into a tent.

“Stay here, okay, I really must talk to you, I have so much to say,” Mary says before disappearing into the tent herself.

The others look at Cleo, who just stares. “Well,” she says looking at Vince, “can we stay?”


	23. You Blame Yourself

Cleo leaving Marie in Minho’s capable watch enters the tent to find Mary explaining how his blood helps Brenda. Brenda who lain down, but she looks slightly less sickly. “So, it’s a cure?” Thomas asks.

“Not exactly,” Mary says. “We will always need more, our bodies will always need more. So… it prevents the spread and the worsening, but she will need more.”

“Then we will make sure she gets it,” Cleo says.

“Princess,” Brenda manages a smile.

“Hey Brenda, you’re looking better,” Cleo says.

“I don’t feel it,” Brenda laughs.

“You know Cleo, your name actually means glory of the father,” Mary says. “I think Ava thought we was being funny, naming you Cleopatra, but I think she overlooked one thing. You are very much your father’s daughter.”

“What do you mean?” Cleo says, sitting next to Brenda.

“Your father was all heart,” she says. She watches her with Brenda, the softness, the care. “You are so like him.”

“The Flare took him too,” Cleo says. Mary’s expression changes.

“We really need to talk,” Mary says. Cleo looks to Thomas.

“You need to talk to Marie, you need to tell her everything, I don’t care if it’s what you’re keeping from me, you need to tell her everything you remember, everything you know. She needs everything she can hold onto right now, things are rough,” Cleo says.

“But you said who we were doesn’t matter,” Thomas says.

“It doesn’t,” Cleo says. “But apparently what you don’t know could harm you, and we both want to protect her, now go.”

“Cleo,” Mary says as Thomas leaves.

“Just a moment,” Cleo says. Mary nods and steps out. Cleo looks at Brenda, and lets Brenda talk, she talks about her childhood, about Wicked about her brother, and when she shows Cleo the photo, the photo she risked the explosion to save.

“His name was-,”

“George,” Cleo says. “His name was George.”

Brenda looks at her and she manages a small sad smile, knowing. “Thomas reminds me of him.”

“Thomas reminds me off him too,” Cleo says. Brenda squeezes her hand.

“I guess you don’t owe me anything princess, I am not dying anymore,” Brenda says.

“We are all dying, some of us just slower than others,” Cleo says, “rest up.” She gets up to leave.

“Cleo?”

“Yeah.”

“Something is up with your friend.”

“I know.”

“You blame yourself,” Marie says.

“If I had listened to you, if I had done something,” Thomas says. “I cared for you then and I let them hurt you.”

“We were so young Thomas, we didn’t know better, we were just kids, we are just kids.”

“But you knew.”

“I didn’t know everything,” Marie looks at the boy she didn’t realised loved her then or now. She looks at Minho who is talking to Aris, the boy she keeps trying deny has feelings for her but it’s becoming more impossible by the day, and to Newt, the boy she never should have loved but fell for anyway. “I still don’t know anything.”

“Cleo was the tipping point for you, you couldn’t bare it, and then they took Minho and Newt and you, you couldn’t take it anymore, they weren’t supposed to be your friends but they became your family, even before The Maze and I couldn’t bare to see you sad, and then I lost you to The Maze, and I couldn’t forgive myself.”

“Thomas-,”

“ _You don’t have to say anything to make me feel better Marie, I don’t expect you to love me, you don’t know how you felt then and everything is so complicated and you are so… selfless, you probably don’t even think about how you feel enough to know. But you just deserve to know Marie, you are loved, you always have been. You always have been_ ” is what Thomas wants to say, what he tries to say, what he should say. But he just smiles at her. “Marie,” he says. “You started something, that saved us all. Don’t forget that.”

Mary just looks at her for such a long time, like a memory. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I just, I haven’t seen you in so long, and the last time I saw you… I gave you that necklace.”

Cleo looks at the necklace around her neck. “You were surprised I had it still.”

“I gave you that necklace, once I realised there was nothing that I could do to stop Ava putting you in The Maze, I only stayed as long as I did to ensure that you wouldn’t go into The Maze without it, by the time she realised what I had done, it was too late, she shouldn’t take it back. At the time we only had three small vials of the cure, you had one, and I made sure Bessie had the other, the third is probably still a trophy around Ava’s neck, a reminder of her selfish little…” she drifts off. Cleo starts to hear it again, in the back of her head, the child crying.

“Sorry, who’s Bessie?”

“Your sister.”

“I… I had a sister?” Cleo asks. Mary looks away.

“She even took that away,” Mary whispers.

“ _C12_. Bessie is C12” Cleo says putting the pieces together. The little girl laughing in her mind with her fathers voice, the little girl crying in The Maze, C12.

Mary gets up and reaches into her bag and pulls out a book, the cover is burned off and the sides are singed. She sits down next to Cleo now and places the book in her hands. “Your mother hated that I have you this,” Mary says. “She says I was cruel, to give you a book about a world you would never experience. But you loved this book, the world before The Flare, the simple life. You loved it, the coffee dates, the picnics in the park, the romance, you feel into it all. Your mother hated it, so much, she said I was filling your head with ideas of a life you would never have, I was making you even softer than you already were. She hoped that in the fire the book had perished, that it would be the end of it, but it was one of the only things that made it out, it was damaged but not in any ways that mattered. I remember telling you that the boy on the cover was gone and you smiled, you were much littler then, Bessie was barely born. You said ‘Eden didn’t look like the boy on the cover anyway’ like you had a different idea for exactly how the boy in the books was supposed to look. I think you did, even as a child you knew your own mind, so clearly. Your mother liked that, but she didn’t like the things you set your mind on, you were too much like your father.”

“My mother is a monster,” Cleo says.

“She wasn’t always,” Mary says. Cleo looks at the book and she sees it on her hands again, the ash.

“What fire?” Cleo asks. Mary looks at her.

“I don’t know what to tell you Cleo, I don’t know what will do more harm than good,” Mary says.

“I want to know it all,” Cleo says.

“Thomas seems to think different,” Mary says.

“Who I was isn’t who I am,” Cleo says.

“I know,” Mary strokes her hair. “I will tell you about the fire tomorrow, and your father and… so much. But right now there is something more important that you need to know.”

“More important?” Cleo asks.

“You don’t know your immunity status, do you?” Mary asks. Cleo shakes her head.

“They didn’t know before I went in, and I refused to have my blood taken when Wicked found us,” Cleo says. Mary squeezes her hand.

“That’s my girl,” she says.

“You know… don’t you?” Cleo asks.

“I gave you that necklace Cleo because I discovered the truth, I never told Ava because Ava was already so… distanced from you, I couldn’t give her more reasons to look away from you,” Mary says. “I wish I had now, had she known, maybe it would have changed things.”

“I think,” Cleo says. “Ava not knowing things about me, I think that may be one of the only things that has kept me alive so far,” she looks through the gap in the tent’s fabric, at Marie, out of earshot and with Thomas.

“You’re not immune Cleo,” Mary says. “You never were, that’s why I gave you that necklace, just in case you needed saving.”

“And Bessie, is she immune?” Cleo asks.

“No,” Mary says. “No, she isn’t.”

“Where is she?” Cleo asks.

“I wish I knew, I really do,” Mary says. “But the last time I saw her, she was playing with Marie.”

“So, you knew but you never told her my immunity status?” Cleo confirms. Mary nods.

“I faked mixed reports, mixed some of yours and A9’s blood samples,” Mary says. Cleo looks at her.

“A9?” she asks. “Are you sure?”

“I needed a positive cure sample to show inconclusively,” she says.

“Are you sure A9 was immune though,” Cleo asks, heart raising in her throat. 

“I have thought about it every day, I know what number I used,” Mary says.

“But A9 was Gally,” Cleo says. Mary looks confused now, Cleo’s hand goes to her necklace. Her breathing unsteady. “I could’ve- I could’ve,” she can’t make the sentence out. “I should’ve saved him.”

“Cleo, you’re okay,” Mary says.

“No, I’m not,” Cleo says. “He saved my life, he didn’t even know it, and he saved my life, and I…”

“It’s hard, when you can’t save people,” Mary says “I know what that’s like.”

“Do you know what it’s like to kill them?” Cleo asks. When Mary doesn’t respond Cleo pulls herself back together. “No one else can know Mary, okay?”

“That you aren’t immune?” she asks.

“Promise me, you won’t tell anyone else.”

“I’ll take it to the grave.”


	24. At Least I Know You Don’t Lie To Me

After checking on Brenda again Cleo joins the others. They have sat up on the ridge, overlooking the camp. She passes Aris who smiles at her, and she nods at him, Sonya and Harriet who are sat with him eye her with a mix of confusion and interest. “She’s odd,” Harriet says.  
“She is,” Aris admits, “but with what she went through.”  
“She got you back to us, to me that counts for everything,” Sonya says.  
“She is sort of scary when she wants to be, but she is smart, and resourceful and as long as Marie is safe, she is pretty level headed,” Aris says.   
“And if Marie isn’t safe?” Sonya asks, watching Cleo as she sits down next to Marie.   
“Then god help whatever is putting Marie in danger,” Aris says.   
“What’s the deal with Marie, she worked for Wicked but she what, changed her mind?” Harriet asks.   
“From what I have observed of Marie, she’s kind, too kind maybe, too delicate for this world, she isn’t a fighter, but that girl can love, she loves entirely, she loves endlessly, you should see the way she is with them,” Aris says.   
“I’ve missed you Aris,” Harriet says.   
“I’ve missed you guys too.”

Cleo looks over the view, seeing the camp, seeing the people. “They move out tomorrow, we are lucky we got here when we did,” Cleo says. Marie looks around.  
“Are we missing Teresa?” she asks.  
“She can stay missing,” Cleo says. Marie gives her a look. “She’s over there.” Cleo knocks her head back to signal behind her and Marie looks to see Teresa on a rock looking into the horizon.  
“I wish Alby could have seen this,” Newt says breaking up the silence. His name catches in Cleo’s chest and Marie can’t look up.   
“And Winston,” Minho says.  
“And Chuck,” Thomas adds.  
“And Gally,” Cleo says. She can feel the others watching her but she doesn’t look up.   
Newt trying to change the subject to avoid anymore pain, nods to Aris. “Aris looks comfortable,” he says.  
“I like him,” Fry says with a smile.  
“Yeah, I don’t trust him though,” Minho laughs.  
“He is a good kid,” Marie adds.  
“A good guy,” Cleo says. “We wouldn’t have gotten here without him.”  
“And a woman’s man apparently,” Thomas says nodding to Sonya and Harriet.  
“Leave him be, his Maze was only girls,” Cleo reminds them.   
“Are we safe now?” Marie asks. “Finally, actually safe?”  
“I don’t think we will ever be safe,” Cleo says.  
“The delight, as always,” Minho says.   
“Look around, we live in this world, this harsh world, I won’t lie about it,” Cleo says. Marie rests her head on Cleo’s shoulder.  
“I appreciate your honesty, at least I know you don’t lie to me,” Marie says. That hits Cleo where it hurts. Cleo kisses her head and just lets her rest.  
“What was with Mary?” Minho asks.   
“She has a lot go guilt for working with Wicked, but she also is working to fix it,” Thomas says, “she helped Brenda.”  
“She realised Wicked was not what it was supposed to be, and she did all she could to undo what had been done,” Cleo says.   
“She’s your Aunt?” Minho asks.   
“That’s not even the strangest thing for me today,” Cleo sighs. She nudges Marie gently. “Marie, sweetie, there is something I need to tell you.”  
“Yeah?” she asks.  
“You know the crying in The Maze?” Cleo asks. Marie looks vividly aware and nods. “It worked on us, and only us, because the girl crying, the recording we heard, we knew her. Her name was Bessie, when you got put in The Maze she was probably about five, she was-,”  
“Your baby sister,” Marie says.   
“You remember her?” Cleo asks. She shakes her head.   
“No, I just, I knew, I don’t know why but I just knew,” Marie says. Cleo looks at her and she knows why she knows, Bessie is probably in Curie’s programming somewhere… Ava would have thought of that if she thought enough to turn her cries into a Sirens call, she would have thought of that.  
“You have a sister?” Newt asks.   
“I had, I have, I don’t know,” Cleo says.   
“Do you think any of us…?” Newt asks trailing off.  
“Likely, not that we would remember,” Cleo says. “But with Bessie and George… I’d be surprised if none of us had siblings.”  
“George?” Thomas asks. Minho looks to Cleo.  
“Wait, you mean George like, from The Maze?” Minho asks.   
“Brenda’s brother,” Cleo says.   
“Brenda’s brother?”   
“He was immune, she wasn’t, they didn’t want her.”   
“But not all of us are immune,” Newt says.  
“Some of us are controls, to see what’s different from the immunes,” Cleo says.  
“That was in those files you read, wasn’t it?” Minho asks. “Do you know which of us are and aren’t?”  
“No,” Cleo says. “I don’t know or I don’t remember, it was just… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have burned them but I just, it felt like the right thing to do.”  
“We don’t blame you,” Newt says. “I think I would rather not know.”  
“Me too,” Minho agrees. They all nod and Cleo rolls her eyes.  
“Don’t try and make me feel better, it makes me feel weird,” Cleo says.  
“Someone should check on her,” Marie says looking at Teresa.   
“She’s fine,” Cleo says. Marie shakes her head.  
“I’m going to check on her,” she says.   
“Be careful,” Cleo says watching her walk away.  
“What’s the worst that could happen?”


	25. I Don’t Want To Hear Your Story

Cleo gets a sickening feeling, deep in her stomach, the calmness of the wind, the quiet of the night drawing in, the absence of trouble, it unsettles her. Cleo has never been good at seeing good as good, it always had to be bracing, waiting, the calm before the storm.   
Cleo looks over her shoulder and Marie is still talking to Teresa and she feels worse. “I am going to,” Cleo gets up.   
“Wait,” Newt says. “Cleo, we all love you, but you really aren’t… a people person, and Marie is, maybe you should just let Marie handle Teresa.”  
“Maybe I am just not a Teresa person,” Cleo says.  
“Even more reason to just stay,” Newt says, “here with us.” Cleo knows that isn’t what he means, and she wants to. She really wants to, between getting separated and everything they have lost, now more than ever she just wants to be next to him, to make things feel okay, to let herself feel the way she does. But she can’t do that, she knows that, and by now, he should too. Cleo isn’t simple, Cleo isn’t an easy option, she is trial and error, she is painful arguing, she is exhausting. But Newt is still trying. It would be sweet if it didn’t hurt so much.   
“I’m going to check on her,” Cleo says. Newt sighs.   
“Marie or Teresa?” he asks. She mocks a laugh.   
“You’re funny,” she says. She takes a look at him, in the lowering light, he looks calm, he looks sad, and he is looking at her like now is the last time he will ever see her, which feels strange because he has always looked at her like the first time. She feels it, all her intentions, all her determination to do the right thing, the good thing, slowly, painfully slowly, starting to work. 

Cleo doesn’t get half way to them when she hears it, on the wind, those three words, over and over again, the three words that seemed to mean nothing when Janson said them, but suddenly, with Teresa looking at Marie, and Marie being what Cleo knows her to be, they feel violent, they feel loaded, they feel… Curie.   
“What are you doing?” Cleo asks picking her up the pace. Teresa looks at her and she looks sad. Marie turns around and Curie smiles.   
“Hello again,” she says.   
“What did you do?” Cleo asks.  
“What I had to do,” Teresa says. Cleo sees the communicator in her hand, and it dawns on her.   
“You were always with them,” Cleo says. “And you knew about her didn’t you,” she grabs Teresa, “the whole time.”  
“Take your hand off her,” Curie warns her. “I won’t ask again.”  
Cleo lets her go, not wanting a fight with Curie. “Cleo you have to understand,” Teresa says, “I am not bad, I don’t want to see you hurt, but people are dying, the world is hurting, you can’t be this selfish, you just can’t.”  
“Why not?” Cleo asks. “I have had everything taken from me Teresa, everything, and you are trying to tell me not wanting to die is selfish?”  
“Do you remember your father?” she asks. Cleo stares at her.  
“You took my memories,” Cleo snaps.  
“Not even a little bit? Like a whisper in the back of your mind? I don’t believe we could actually take everything, it’s so touch and go, so hard to see what will remain, watching you in The Maze, seeing you sing, what stuck in that stubborn head of yours, it was almost all your father, and a very little bit of Mary,” Teresa says. Cleo glances to Curie who is just watching the horizon, small silver cylinder in hand. “My mother died of The Flare, she got so sick and I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do.”  
“I don’t want to hear your story,” Cleo says.   
“Your father got it too,” Teresa says. “You don’t remember but it wouldn’t make a difference, when it was fresh and painful and so real, you still couldn’t see the bigger picture.”  
“Murder, the bigger picture, Teresa, is almost generation genocide,” Cleo says.   
“Whatever it takes,” Curie says.   
“How can either of you reason that?” Cleo asks. “As immunes-,”  
“I am not immune,” Curie says. Cleo’s heart drops.  
“What?” Cleo asks. Curie smiles.   
“Marie isn’t immune, she was never supposed to be in The Maze, she was… unexpected,” Curie says.   
“You could look less smug,” Cleo says. “That’s you too.”  
“She’s my host we are not the same,” Curie says. “I am an idea, I am programming, I am not a person.”  
“You get defensive like one,” Cleo says.  
“She was being effected by the obscene amount of emotion Marie has, she’s in charge now, she’s full Curie,” Teresa says.   
“Why would you do that?” Cleo asks.  
“Three reasons,” Teresa says. “One, Curie was designed to protect Wicked property, to protect me, I knew that with what I was going to do, I would need that, I would need her, to protect me.”  
“From what?”  
“From you,” Teresa says. “Two, I had the communicator but no way of real of telling Janson where to find us. And three, I figured you come quietly this way, for Marie.”  
“Come quietly,” Cleo says, “what the hell does that me-,”  
The helicopters come into view, and Cleo realises Teresa has been stalling her, she’d be impressed if she wasn’t so angry. “I’d say I’m sorry Cleo, but it’s what needed to be done, we have to do the right thing, Cleo,” Teresa says.  
“Fuck you Teresa,” Cleo says, she wants to run, she wants to run so badly, but she also doesn’t want to leave Marie. Even though she knows that isn’t Marie, and she doesn’t know what to do to fix it, to bring her back. Even if the sound of the helicopter is bringing her back memories of arriving at the facility, of the cranks, of Gally. Even if she can’t think straight. Even if she knows it could kill her, she doesn’t want to leave Marie. Not for a moment.   
That’s when the first explosion happens.


	26. You Haven’t Learned A Thing About Us

Cleo is leaning on the side of a tent, and she isn’t sure how she got here, between the gunfire and the actual fire, the explosions and the chaos, she was with Curie and Teresa and then she wasn’t. She moves forward only to feel a hand on her shoulder, she reaches for gun. “Calm down princess, not the enemy here,” Brenda says. She turns around, Brenda, Jorge and Thomas standing behind her. She throws her arms around Brenda and Brenda looks surprised at the hug.

“I could have shot you,” Cleo says. She smiles.

“I probably owe you that princess,” she says.

“Where is Marie, I thought she would be with you,” Thomas says. Cleo feels sick again, she can’t look at Thomas. Brenda looks concerned.

“Princess, where is your friend?” she asks.

“You were right, I told you… you were right,” Cleo says.

“How bad is it?” Brenda asks.

“What aren’t you guys telling me?” Thomas asks.

“She’s with them,” Cleo says, eyes still on Brenda, “she doesn’t realise what she is doing, they fucked her up, real good, before they sent her into The Maze, it’s always been there, it’s just been dormant until recently.”

“What did they do to Marie?” Thomas asks, starting to catch on.

“We aren’t dealing with Marie right now Thomas,” Cleo says, tears starting to well. “I don’t want to say it, I don’t want it to be true, I don’t want to face it, but I can’t keep hiding it, I hate lying. I hate it.” Brenda grabs her hands in an attempt to calm her down. “She isn’t herself, at all, she is someone else, someone Wicked controls.”

“How?” Thomas says, a stutter in his voice.

“Teresa,” Cleo says, “my mother, Janson, but mostly fucking Teresa.”

“That’s why you went, you didn’t trust her alone with Marie,” Thomas says. “How long have you known?”

“We don’t have time for this right now,” Cleo says, seeing Newt through the chaos.

“How long have you known Cleo?” Thomas demands.

“Without a doubt, since Marie kissed Newt,” Cleo says. Thomas stares. “Yeah, you missed that one. And with doubt, since Wicked, since Janson, I don’t know, okay. But we need to help the others, you can yell at me later.”

“I don’t want to yell at you Cleo, I want to help her,” Thomas says.

“You’re both wrong, we need to go,” Jorge says. He gestures around, to the flames and the chaos, to Minho and Newt backed into a corner, to Wicked’s arrival overhead. “We need to get you somewhere safe, we can’t help them.”

“If you think there is a world, where either of us are leaving Marie, or the others, you haven’t learned a thing about us Jorge,” Cleo says. “Not a damn thing.”

“Cleo, if you’re really going to do this,” Brenda hands her a gun. “You need this.”

“I have-,”

“I know you have that,” Brenda takes the other gun from her hand and not particularly caring about personal boundaries she tucks it under Cleo’s shirt. “But I’m not an idiot, I’ve seen how you choose to use that thing. You won’t, not unless you really, really have to. You lost your bow over using that gun Cleo. I don’t understand it but those bullets, they mean something to you, and you aren’t going to shoot random men with them, but you will with this. Keep your bullets for what matters, but if you are going into this fight, don’t go unarmed.”

“Thank you,” Cleo says, she turns to Jorge. “Take her far away from this, far, far away.”

“I will, I promise.”

“Good, now run,” Cleo says, grabbing Thomas’s hand. “Run.”

Minho sees Newt and Thomas running through the fire and he calls out. “You idiots,” Minho grabs a handful of Thomas’s sleeve as he yanks him into cover. “You are crazy doing that.”

“I know,” Thomas says. “But we don’t really have much choice.”

“You guys are failing without us,” Cleo adds. Newt looks at her and the words that come from his mouth are exactly all she feared he would say.

“Where is Marie?” he asks. Minho looks at Cleo now.

“Where the hell is Marie?” Minho says.

“I,” Cleo says, she doesn’t know what to say, she already had to say it once and she can’t bare the look in Minho’s eyes.

“Cleo,” Minho says, “where the hell is she?”

“Don’t” Thomas says. “Cleo is struggling enough, don’t yell at her.”

“What does that mean?” Newt asks. Cleo is looking through the smoke, she sees figures, she sees outlines, she sees pain and misery in the smoke. She looks at her hands and they are covered in ash, ash she doesn’t even try to brush away this time. She hears it, the crying, she knows it is in her head but she doesn’t understand why here, why now.

“What do you mean with Wicked?” Minho asks.

The figures in the smoke start to take form, Teresa moving through the crowd, towards the large copter about to land. Curie by her side. Minho goes to call to her but Thomas grabs him, hand over mouth and pulls him to the floor. “That isn’t Marie,” Thomas says.

“You realise how crazy you sound right?” Newt asks.

“That isn’t Marie,” Cleo says. “That’s Curie.”

“Who the hell is Curie?” Minho asks.

“She is a fail safe set up by Wicked, something we could all care for, and bring into our lives, to protect and adore, that would protect the valuables in return, the is programming and-,” Cleo stops. “That’s not Marie, it’s Marie’s body but it isn’t her mind, Wicked are controlling her and she doesn’t even know.”

“How could Janson have done that in that little time?” Newt asks. Cleo chokes back a cry.

“He didn’t Newt,” Cleo says.

“She was gone from the lab a long time before she appeared in The Maze,” Thomas says.

“She was always like this, Curie was always there, in her, in the very back of her mind, Marie was always Wicked’s secret weapon,” Cleo says.

“The whole time?” Minho asks.

“The whole time.”

Vince is still trying to get the gun to work, and Cleo is trying to move but she can’t keep a grip on where she is, she keeps slipping.

_“I care that you don’t seem to care what happens to you. You could have died, and for what?”_

“Cleo,” Newt says. “Are you okay?”

_“You are so fast to act, you don’t ever think, do you consider what could be bad for you?”_

“How can I be okay?” Cleo asks.

_“You never consider the danger you put yourself in, can you make any good choices when you are so impulsive?”_

“Cleo…”

_“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, just for one day, give me a break.”_

“How can I ever be okay?” Cleo asks.

That’s when the second wave hits, an electrical bomb, not unlike the taser guns Janson seems to favour so much, explodes, disarming and ruining their chances. The helicopter doors open and Janson walks out, tall and smug. Teresa and Curie standing to his side.

“Round them up boys, this shall be fun.”


	27. Cleo, Please

Ava walks out the carrier, looking at the lines of them. “Teresa,” she says smiling at her. “You did well.”

Newt clenches his fist and Cleo places her hand over his, like a reassurance which is a lie in itself, Cleo isn’t reassured about anything. Watching Curie stand next to Teresa, gun in hand. Janson checking tags and smiling in the way that he does. Cleo wants to scream. Cleo wants to fight. But she feels the weight of the gun in her pocket, the one Brenda gave her. It is almost enough of a distraction that she almost forgets the weight of the one under her top.

Ava looks to Cleo, a sigh in her lungs and a tiredness in her eyes. “Cleopatra,” she says slowly.

“Ava,” Cleo responds.

“Is that any tone to take with your mother?” she asks.

“You lost the right to call yourself that a long time ago,” Cleo says. Ava nods a little.

“Maybe I did, but you forget, this is all for good reasons. You see me as the enemy. I am not the enemy. I am a doctor, I made a promise, I took an oath,” Ava says. “I have a world to save, you don’t seem to understand Cleopatra, you never did. But Teresa, she sees the bigger picture, she sees it all. She knows what needs to be done.” She leans down to touch Cleo’s face and Cleo pulls the gun from her pocket on her, she presses it to her chest.

“Don’t touch me” Cleo says. Ava doesn’t move.

“No one thought to check her for a weapon?” Janson asks.

“People always underestimate me,” Cleo says.

“It won’t happen again, I can assure you,” Ava says. Cleo can sense Curie’s eye on her, but Curie knows Cleo, she has assessed her at length, she has assessed the danger Cleo can present, and she doesn’t move.

“It isn’t nice, is it?” Cleo asks, hand not wavering. “The feeling of being so helpless, so close to death. Is it worse knowing it’s me, that your own blood can take your life from you? It is worse for you? It was worse for me.”

“I think it would be,” Ava says, “if I thought you actually had it in you.”

“You don’t know what I am capable of,” Cleo says.

“Cleo, please,” Teresa says. “You are all safe, we are all safe, I made a deal.”

“A deal for all of us?” Aris asks. Teresa doesn’t look at him.

“It was her only condition,” Janson says eyes on Curie rather than Cleo.

“Don’t I?” Ava asks. As she and Cleo aren’t paying attention to them, only to each other. She moves closer, pushing the gun to touch the fabric of her clothes as she whispers to Cleo. “It was real for me,” she whispers. “And then they ruined it.”

_“It was real for me,” he says. “And then they ruined it.”_

“You were watching,” Cleo says. “Even then.”

“I was always watching,” Ava says. Cleo pulls the trigger, she doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t think, she just pulls it. But the gun jams. Ava laughs. “Well,” she says taking the gun from Cleo’s hand, “you impress me Cleopatra, maybe I did underestimate you.”

Newt and Thomas are looking at her, and she can’t tell if it’s because of the mistake she clearly just made, or because of the choice she tried to make. “Cleo,” Newt whispers.

“I am not the bad guy,” Ava says walking back to address them all. “I just need more time.”

“You need more blood,” Mary says stepping out from the crowd. “That’s what you mean.”


	28. I Had To Try That At Least Once

“Mary,” Ava says. “I hoped I would see you again.”

“I doubt that,” Mary says.

“You didn’t miss me?” Ava asks. Mary looks at her, a sort of rage building that Cleo recognises but doesn’t understand. It looks like more than she can understand, more than she knows, and now with Ava and Janson, more than she may ever know.

“I don’t want to do pleasantries Ava,” Mary says. “I am too tired and too old and too aware of the horrors we have done, to do pleasantries.”

“I am sorry about these circumstances Mary,” Ava says. “I did love your brother.”

“I am sorry about a lot of things too, Ava. But not this, my conscience is clear, I protected my family all I could, you destroyed it,” Mary says.

“I did not destroy it,” Ava defends herself.

“Where is Bessie Ava?” Mary asks. Ava scoffs, her eyes moving to Cleo. Cleo is watching her, holding her breath.

“Bessie is fine,” Ava says.

“You said the same about Cleo,” Mary said. Ava looks at Cleo.

“She is fine,” Ava says. Mary staggers a breath, an anger that Cleo recognises form herself.

“You sent her into The Maze, you have no idea what you put her through,” Mary says.

“I know exactly what I put her through, I watched it, every day,” Ava says.

“You traumatised her.”

“I made her tough. I fixed a problem you and your brother caused,” Ava says.

“Being like my brother was never a problem that needed to be fixed,” Mary says.

“You were always too soft Mary, you know what is at stake, you know what needs to be done and you still can’t do it,” Ava says. “Do you think I enjoy this?”

“Yes actually, in your twisted way, I think you very much enjoy this,” Mary says. “I thought I was protecting Cleo by not telling you that she was immune,” Mary glances to Curie and then back to Ava, “but apparently even the uncertainty wasn’t enough to protect her from you.”

Cleo is staring, Mary is straight out lying, loudly, in front of everyone and she doesn’t understand why. Until she sees Curie’s face, the way it changes, the way her programming starts to adjust for this new information. Mary is trying to protect her, Mary is trying to make sure in her absence, Cleo is still safe. Which suggests she is going somewhere. Cleo realises all too late what Mary knew the moment she stepped into the light. Mary wasn’t going to make it out of this alive. “Mary, no,” Cleo whispers. Newt looks at her, just as Curie lifts the gun.

“Don’t,” Newt warns Cleo but Newt’s word was never enough to stop her, not in The Glade, not in The Scorch, not now. Cleo lunges at Curie, in an attempt to stop her, but the gun goes off anyway. Cleo knocks Curie off balance but the shot hits Mary none the less.

“Marie,” Cleo says, staring Curie in the eyes, “if you can hear me, if you remember this, you need to know it isn’t your fault. It isn’t your fault.”

“She’s screaming,” Curie says as she pushes her back to the line with Newt and Thomas.

“That’s the daughter I knew was in there somewhere,” Janson says placing a hand on Curie’s shoulder.

“Daughter,” Minho whispers.

“Don’t,” Cleo says. “Don’t be surprised by anything anymore Minho, it’s all a cruel fucking cosmic joke.”

The reaction to Mary being shot, the rushing, the movement, Ava’s eyes on something that isn’t the bunch of them, Thomas doesn’t hesitate. While the guards are trying to load the immunes on the carrier, while Vince is listening desperately for a heartbeat, Thomas, kicking the nearby guards feet out from under him, pulls Newt to his feet, and Cleo grabs Minho following in quick suit. No idea on what he is planning, no idea on how the hell they get out of this, Cleo just looks to Thomas, hoping that the incredibly unpredictable boy she has known for so little time, might just be able to surprise her.

He holds out a detonator and Cleo almost feels her heart stop. 

“Fix her,” Thomas says. “Fix her, and let them go.”

“Thomas,” Ava says gently.

“No, don’t talk. Give Marie back to us and let them go, all of them. Right now,” Thomas says.

“You know we can’t do that Thomas,” Ava says. Curie is watching Thomas carefully.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Curie says. “Marie doesn’t want you to do that.”

“You don’t get to talk about Marie,” Cleo says, placing her hand over Thomas’s. She helps hold the detonator still. Minho looks at them both, standing so tall, so unwavering. Newt’s eyes on Cleo. Cleo, the defender, Cleo, the fight, Cleo the Keeper of The Fire and the teller of stories. Cleo who couldn’t look at him for weeks because he tried to leave her. He looks at her now, unwavering, not fearful, not sad. She looks so certain. Minho places a hand on Thomas’s shoulder.

“I’m with you Thomas,” he says.

Cleo looks so clear to everyone, so strong, so ready to die. But she isn’t even there. She isn’t stood where she stands, she is in her head. Lost in a memory. Newt steps closer, and sees her, how unseeing her eyes are.

“We are with you mate,” Newt says. “I’ve just got to do one thing first.”

_“I’ve just got to do one thing, because if I don’t I will regret it,” Gally says. Cleo looks up from the desk with a smile._

_“Really Gally,” she says. “And what’s that?”_

_“This,” he says and kisses her. It takes her off guard because the thought had never crossed her mind, not even for a moment. So wrapped up in her own world, in Newt and everything else it had never occurred to her. In hindsight it should have, the staircase, the mornings, the way he smiled at her. “I had to try that at least once.”_

Cleo tunes back in to the world around her to find Newt grab her free hand and pull her in close, she is barely out of her memory when he kisses her. It is so different to every other time she has been kissed. Maybe it is the way their world might literally be ending, maybe it is the way she waited for something she never thought would come, or maybe it’s because it’s Newt, it’s always been Newt, and all after everything, she has almost forgotten that. “I had to try that at least once” Newt says. Memory flickers over reality and for a moment it is Gally holding her hand, and she smiles.

“Once?” she asks. The illusion fades and Newt is smiling, but she doesn’t understand why.

Thomas is holding the detonator and Cleo just nods. “We can’t go back,” Thomas says.

“We won’t go back,” Cleo says.

“Do it Thomas,” Minho says. Thomas hovers over the trigger and everyone holds their breath.

“What out,” comes Jorge’s voice loud as the truck crashes through Wicked’s men and the mess that has been made.

“Move!” Brenda yells leaning out the window. In the chaos Thomas drops the detonator and they run.

Thomas doesn’t get far before Janson grabs him and throws him to the ground, Cleo turns to see it and is quick to move to his aid. But Curie is quicker. As Janson goes to shoot Thomas, Curie lets off a warning shot that lands in Janson’s arm. “Protect,” she mouths to Cleo.

Thomas gets to his feet and Cleo steps in front of him, as Curie approaches slowly, with a smile. “Oh Cleopatra,” she says. “You don’t want to fight me. Come quietly.”

“You think after everything I know, I would do that?” Cleo asks. Curie laughs.

“I have the solution for that.”


	29. We Will Have A Chase

“What does that mean?” Cleo asks. Curie laughs.

“You think you could take me Cleo?” Curie mocks. “With this face and all those memories rattling around in your head, all those feelings, all that trauma.”

“Don’t,” Cleo says.

“Don’t what?” she asks. “Are you even sure I’m real?” Cleo looks at her, her mannerisms, her stance, her smile. She knows Curie is real. She knows Gally isn’t. She knows Curie knows all that Marie knows and can say and do as she pleases.

“I can hurt you without hurting Marie,” Cleo says.

“No, you can’t,” Curie says, grabbing her. Thomas unsure what to do picks up a taser gun from the floor.

“You put her down,” Thomas warns Curie.

“Or what?” Curie says, cynically. “Oh Thomas, Tommy, Thomas… you won’t hurt me, you don’t risk it, you can’t.” Cleo kicks Curie and slips out of her hold. “Ouch,” Curie says, “that actually sort of hurt.”

“I’m not going to damage you, you’re far too precious,” Curie says. “Too valuable, but I do have orders to make you more cooperative.” Cleo laughs.

“When in my life have I ever been seen as cooperative?” Cleo asks.

“Well, this has been proven to work on almost all the subjects with minimal issues,” Curie says pulling a syringe from her pocket.

“That truth serum that Marie had?” Thomas asks, eyes wide. That serum not only made Marie open to suggestion but it made her giddy, unaware of her situation, liable to accident. She needed so much help from Minho and Thomas and that was at the end of the serum’s process, they never got to see it at it’s worst.

“No,” Curie says plainly. But Thomas doesn’t feel any better. “Cleo already talks far too much to want to put us through that. I have something better.”

“Guys!” Newt yells from behind them in the smoke.

Wicked are grabbing the immunes that they can and trying to get out of the place, retreating. But Curie has her sights fixed on Cleo and running won’t help. But it won’t stop them trying. Cleo looks at Thomas, and they share the same look they shared when they saw Minho and Alby in The Maze with the griever. A look of complete agreeance on something that they both know is incredibly stupid. And they both run.

Curie nods. “Okay, you want a chase, we will have a chase,” she says following them through the smoke.

Weaving through the burning remains of the camp, the smoke and the screams of people, Cleo can barely keep her eyes on the path in front. She can hear Newt asking if she is okay, but she can’t answer, and she shouldn’t, he shouldn’t be asking such a question. Cleo passes something and she realises what she is looking at and stumbles back, Mary’s body on the floor to her side, lain where she fell, blood soaking the ground.

Cleo sees Mary and she’s sees Gally, she sees the people that loved her, and the people that died for it. She sees the cost of loving her in painful clear colour. And it is enough for Curie to grab her. The throws her to the ground and still overwhelmed Cleo barely even puts up a fight.

“Oh Cleo, you said how you wanted to forget it all, remember, Newt, Gally, all the feelings,” Curie says.

_“Gally is proof that it doesn’t matter if I love someone, because I love you more. So, before you try to blame yourself for this, know it isn’t just you I am considering in this. It isn’t fair on him either. I’m a mess. I let myself fall in love to distract myself from being in love Marie, I am no good for him, not even a little bit. But you, you are.”_

_“Cleo I couldn’t be with him,” Ma says. “I-,”_

_“Sometimes I just wish I could forget it all, Newt, Gally, how I feel, but it isn’t that simple, I can’t just remove those memories and start again,” Cleo sighs._

_“You don’t mean that, Newt and you, you should be-,”_

_“Forget about Newt for a minute okay,” Cleo says._

“Well, I am going to help you with that now,” Curie says. She shows her the syringe. “Normally they do this over time, shot after shot, taking the memories away layer by layer, but we have made an exception for you. We figured out you are more stressed, more valuable the less you know. So, you really don’t need to remember anything. Much easier that way.”

“Marie,” Cleo manages to choke out.

“Marie isn’t home Cleopatra.” Curie says holding the needle to her throat. “She can’t help you.”

“I won’t forget her,” Cleo says, “not again.”

“You don’t get a choice,” Curie says and stabs the needle into her neck. Cleo tries to move but Curie has her pinned, so focused on the precision she doesn’t notice Thomas and Newt as they pull her back. The needle falls and breaks, the remaining contents spilling on the ashen ground, Cleo hitting her head hard on the ground is knocked unconscious. “I do hope that was enough.”

“What the hell did you do?” Newt asks. Curie says nothing and goes to pick up her prize. Newt puts himself between Cleo and Curie and she frowns.

“I wouldn’t do that,” she warns him. “You aren’t of value to me, I can and I will kill you if that is necessary. And she would hate that,” she taps her temple, a taunt. “So don’t make this hard.”

“You can’t hurt me,” Thomas says moving between Newt and Curie. “And I won’t let you hurt Marie.”

“Do you love her?” Curie teases.

“All my life I have never loved anything else,” Thomas says. Curie rolls her eyes.

“I would rather not harm you, but don’t try me, she is far more valuable than you,” Curie says. She moves for her gun but Minho points a taser gun at her.

“Take Cleo and go,” Minho says. Curie looks him up and down almost impressed.

“Minho,” Thomas tries.

“I’m right behind you,” Minho says.

“Minho,” Newt tries.

“Take Cleo somewhere safe, she needs you right now,” Minho says. Thomas and Newt pick up Cleo and start to disappear into the smoke. Curie just smiles at Minho. “You aren’t her.”

“No,” Curie says. “And she will hate that I do this, and I love that.” Curie, much faster than Minho, and much more trigger happy, takes her own non-lethal and shoots Minho. The shock of the electricity disarms him and Curie watches the guards pick him up.

She turns to see where Cleo could have gone but she has lost her in the mess of things. She looks for ways to track her but Ava calls her name and she turns to see an injured Janson and Ava standing with Teresa and the other immunes on the copter. “Time to go Curie,” Ava says. Curie looks back into the smoke. “Cleo was never in your programming; she isn’t an issue. Come.”

Without saying anything else Curie boards with the others, following her orders, like the perfect little solider she is. Janson eyes her for a moment, but knowing it was on him he says nothing.

Thomas watches Wicked leave with Minho, Aris and the others. “Is she okay?” Newt asks Harriet, who is tending to an unconscious Cleo.

“I don’t know, she has stopped bleeding from her head, but I don’t know how much serum got into her. We won’t know what she can remember until she wakes up,” Harriet says. “If she remembers anything at all. You have to consider the possibility that she won’t remember a thing.”

“But she is going to wake up, right?” Newt asks. Harriet looks uncertain.

“I think so.”


	30. Especially Marie

The sunrises. The aftermath of the night before evident in the harsh truth of daylight.  
Thomas puts a bag over his shoulder and Vince looks at him. “You cannot be serious,” he says.  
“I made Minho a promise, they took my friends, my friends who are my family, I can’t come with you, I can’t leave them,” Thomas says.  
“Thomas,” Newt says glancing to the tent where Harriet is watching over Cleo. “I have known Minho for as long as I can remember, I love Marie more than you know, Aris is a good, kid. Don’t you think if I thought it was possible, I would already be halfway there?” Newt asks. “It’s suicide.”  
“Cleo will want to go,” Thomas says. Newt tries not to respond in anger, but it slightly shines through.  
“Cleo might not remember who anyone is,” Newt says. “Cleo has been through enough.”  
“It’s Marie,” Thomas says.  
“No, it’s not,” Newt says. “And if we had even the slightest idea of how to help her be Marie again, then I’d agree with you. But-,”  
“What if it was her?” Thomas asks plainly.  
“It’s because of her,” Newt says. “We have lost so much, and we still don’t know the extent of what we have lost.”  
“Newt I am not asking you to come with me,” Thomas says. Newt sighs.  
“Mate-,”  
“It’s not even just Marie or Minho,” Thomas says. “It is Wicked. They won’t stop. Not ever. They will just keep hurting people, they will never stop Newt. Kids just like us, will continue to have the same fate as us. But I am going to stop them.”  
“Thomas-,”  
“I am not asking for you to come with me,” Thomas says.  
“But you know I will,” Newt says. “Because you know that no matter if she has her memories or not, no matter if she is Cleo when she wakes up, it’s what she would do, it’s what she would want to do. Because it isn’t just Minho or Marie or Aris. It is our Minho, our Marie, our Aris, and Cleo wouldn’t leave them.”  
“Especially Marie.”  
“Especially Marie.”  
“So,” Thomas says. “I am going to kill Ava Paige.”  
“Not if Cleo does first,” Newt says, trying to laugh it off.  
Harriet walks out the tent, looking at both the boys. “Um, Newt, Thomas,” Harriet says. “I think she is waking up.”  
Newt and Thomas walk in the tent and Cleo is already putting her shoes on. She looks up at them for a moment. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks.   
“Cleo?” Newt asks.   
“Yeah,” Cleo says. Newt looks relieved. “So, I have one question… Where the hell is-,”  
“Marie, yeah we are about to go get her,” Thomas says.   
“I was going to say Gally, who the hell is Marie?”   



End file.
